Quotes of the week
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." C.S. Lewis, (books by this author)
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~Abraham Lincoln
Meditation of the week
Should everybody like me?
When people say they are people-pleasers, they're acknowledging that it's a problem.
It's a problem because it reflects a desire to have everybody's acceptance and approval - to be universally liked. But from what we know about human relationships, this is not possible. No matter how hard we work to be pleasant and likeable, some people may still detest us for reasons we cannot understand. When that happens, we should not blame ourselves or step up our efforts to win them over. Our best course is to be cordial to them and to avoid giving offense in any way.
If our own behavior is mature and reasonable, even the people who don't like us will at least respect us. That may be the best we can hope for, and it is certainly far better than shameless people pleasing. In the end, people-pleasers don't please anybody and, as a famous comedian notes about himself, they "get no respect."
I'll try hard to be pleasant and cordial to everyone I meet today. If some people do not respond in the same way, I'll accept this without feeling hurt or betrayed.
When people say they are people-pleasers, they're acknowledging that it's a problem.
It's a problem because it reflects a desire to have everybody's acceptance and approval - to be universally liked. But from what we know about human relationships, this is not possible. No matter how hard we work to be pleasant and likeable, some people may still detest us for reasons we cannot understand. When that happens, we should not blame ourselves or step up our efforts to win them over. Our best course is to be cordial to them and to avoid giving offense in any way.
If our own behavior is mature and reasonable, even the people who don't like us will at least respect us. That may be the best we can hope for, and it is certainly far better than shameless people pleasing. In the end, people-pleasers don't please anybody and, as a famous comedian notes about himself, they "get no respect."
I'll try hard to be pleasant and cordial to everyone I meet today. If some people do not respond in the same way, I'll accept this without feeling hurt or betrayed.
Video of the week
Paul Zerdin Ventriloquist at Comedy Rocks With Jason .Manford - FUNNY -
You can’t make up such a thing as that, I dare you to even try
Pages from her storyA puritan Maidens diary
This diary was written by a 15-year-old Rhode Island girl. Its first entry is dated December 5, 1675, which appears to be her birthday. The rest of the diary covers a two-year period and ends abruptly in November 1677. The diary was found by Adeline Slicer, who published its contents in The New England Magazine in September 1894. Although the actual name of the diarist is unknown, her entries provide an excellent snapshot of Puritan life during the Colonial period.
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December 5, 1675.....I am fifteen years old to-day, and while sitting with my stitchery in my hand, there came a man in all wet with the salt spray, he having just landed by the boat from Sandwich, which had much ado to land by reason of the surf. I myself had been down to the shore and saw the great waves breaking, and the high tide running up as far as the hillocks of dead grass. The man George, an Indian, brings word of much sickness in Boston, and great trouble with the Quakers and Baptists; that many of the children throughout the country be not baptized, and without that religion comes to nothing. My mother hath bid me this day put on a fresh kirtle and wimple, though it be not the Lord's day, and my Aunt Alice coming in did chide me and say that to pay attention to a birthday was putting myself with the world's people. It happens from this that my kirtle and wimple are not longer pleasing to me, and what with this and the bad news from Boston my birthday has ended in sorrow.
The rest of the diary includes entries recounting holiday events, Indian attacks, religious observances and visits to Boston.
Poem of the week
H O M E
GEORGE HORTON
The prince rode up to the palace gates
And his eyes with tears are dim,
For he thinks of the beggar maiden sweet
Who never may wed with him,
For home is where the heart is,
In dwelling great or small,
And there’s many a splendid palace
That’s never a home at all.
The yeoman comes to his little cot
With a song when day is done,
For his dearie is standing in the door
And his children to meet him run,
For home is where the heart is,
In dwelling great or small,
And there’s many a stately mansion
That’s never a home at all.
The prince rode up to the palace gates
And his eyes with tears are dim,
For he thinks of the beggar maiden sweet
Who never may wed with him,
For home is where the heart is,
In dwelling great or small,
And there’s many a splendid palace
That’s never a home at all.
The yeoman comes to his little cot
With a song when day is done,
For his dearie is standing in the door
And his children to meet him run,
For home is where the heart is,
In dwelling great or small,
And there’s many a stately mansion
That’s never a home at all.
Could I but live with my own sweetheart
In a hut with sanded floor,
I’d be richer far than a loveless man
With fame and a golden store.
For home is where the heart is.
In dwelling great or small,
And a cottage lighted by lovelight
Is the dearest home of all.
In a hut with sanded floor,
I’d be richer far than a loveless man
With fame and a golden store.
For home is where the heart is.
In dwelling great or small,
And a cottage lighted by lovelight
Is the dearest home of all.
And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor
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