If you haven't read
and
you should do it immediately.
Her words and life have been an inspiration to me over the last several years.
I aspire to be as overrated as some accuse her of being.
and specifically drove my time in London:
"Every
person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can
exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they
could exist eternally in our absence.
Each
person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions
searched for. Each of us needs to
withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. We need hours of aimless wandering or space
of time sitting on park benches, observing the mysterious world of ants and the
canopy of treetops.
If we
step away for a time, we are not, as many may think and some will accuse, being
irresponsible, but rather we are preparing ourselves to more ably perform our
duties and discharge our obligations."
I carried her words alone around the streets of London.
And these words on every day, adventure or not:
“Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads
which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the
future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting,
then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary
baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is
also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change
that as well.”
or
“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all
peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that
if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”
See!
Don't you just want to jump in the car and lay eyes on something you've never seen?
Or say hello to the neighbor you've never introduced yourself to
because they let their dog pee on your lawn?
She is gone away but her voice will continue to echo because she shared.
I wish everyone would share and never really be gone.
I think that's why I share; to matter, to last.
And it's good.
Labels: inspiration
