missypuss wrote:Come on guys we all have crappy days.
But we also have things we use to get us through those days..
Il start this one off..
"Always smile back at little children.
To ignore them
is to destroy their belief
that the world is good."
Pam Brown. B .1928
Missypuss, an amazing quotation and an amazing post. Truly.
Something unusual, and good, about them both.
Have you ever pictured, say, a movie actor but couldn't remember the name? And then you do a sort of free-form association. It can start with a glass. Filled with what...water, wine, milk? Beer! And then you wander through brand names. Something Irish. And you remember Alec Guinness.
Looking at the quotation and at your post prompted the same sort of wandering. Picturing the child smiling and a stranger smiling back...the words were written at least several generations ago: a modern author wouldn't come up with such an idea. A Bible verse, remembered wrongly: Blessed are the children for they shall see God.
Then the realization. A simple one, but profound. The quotation does not contain the words "I" or "me". Your introductory language uses "I" only in a helpful sense. No wonder the quotation had to be old. As an exercise, the preceding three paragraphs are also written without "I" or "me".
This gets back to the Media and Advertising. This is now the world of I-I-I-I and me-me-me-me. A partial exemption for phrases such as "I think that" because they tend to make a statement less dogmatic. Wagner was the best composer!! (Achtung. Sieg heil.) Instead: I think that...
Beyond that, look at the world around us. The center of the universe is I-me. Self-absorption, nothing beyond the self. No standards. No responsibility. No awareness of anyone except.
"I've been listening for two whole days, and I... ."
"I want." "I have." "I like."
Some people can't understand the world in any other way.
Thanks, Missypuss, for reminding us that something else was thinkable.
And for giving us a faint whiff of what it was.
.