July 1Meet Your Life
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich person's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
Henry David Thoreau—Walden (1854)
As you pursue your poetry, your art, you will be misunderstood by many, perhaps most.
The trick is to see your vision both as absolute truth for you and realize that there are no absolute truths. People all around you will see the world, not as it is but as they choose to see it.
This harsh reality applies equally to you. You get to choose how you see the world, you get to decide how remarkable your life has become, you get to determine how brightly the sun is reflected in your current setting.
All life is subjective.
Today, release the grip of absolute truths and simply meet your life and live it.
Challenge Question
- When did you last find fault with something? How did it serve you?
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