Do what you love to do

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you love to do, in order to have what you want."

-- Margaret Young

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If Joan of Arc could turn the tide of an entire war before her eighteenth birthday, you can get out of bed.

~ E. Jean Carroll

"All the people we call ‘geniuses’ are men and women who somehow escaped having to put that curious, wondering child in themselves to sleep."

~ Barbara Sher

Life is a novel, and we are not the readers, but rather the writers. If you don't like the ending, then just tear off the page and write a new one.

~ author unknown

" What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; boldness has genius,
power and magic in it."

~ Johann von Goethe

for will (with much love)

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out if they've got a second. Give your dreams all you've got and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
- William James

There is a Dream dreaming us. — African Bushman

09.22.08 To Be Of Use

To be of use
by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

"To be of use" by Marge Piercy © 1973, 1982.
From CIRCLES ON THE WATER © 1982 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and Middlemarsh, Inc.
First published in Lunch magazine. Used by permission of Wallace Literary Agency.