The freshness of walking on the green grass, facing the cool breeze on the face and the absorption in the observation of Nature - all this come to my memory when I read this poem by Mary Oliver.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Tribute to Mary Oliver for this refreshing work. Thanks to diomass.org for the image and allspirit.co.uk for the online version of this poem.
In a training session, my trainer mentioned about Rudyard Kipling's management insight. I have known Kipling as a poet only.
With curiosity, I googled today and came across some very interesting thoughts of his. Please find them below. Thanks to him, to brainyquotes.com for the online version of his quotes and to http://www.poems.net.au/images/rudyard-kipling.jpg for the image.
Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbours.
God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.
If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you. The world will be yours and everything in it, what's more, you'll be a man, my son.
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it
cannot be learned in any school.
The full poem titled 'There is a candle in your heart' by Rumi can be read from http://www.poetseers.org
It is simple and beautiful. Thanks to Rumi, the website and Sharam Shiva who translated this poem.
As I was browsing through the quotes on topics that I like the most, I started thinking what would have been the experiences of the people who have said these and why would they have?
=============
"The individual who wants to reach the top in business must appreciate the might and force of habit. He must be quick to break those habits that can break him and hasten to adopt those practices that will become the habits that help him achieve the success he desires."
J. Paul Getty
"Silence is a source of great strength."
Lao Tzu
"Listening looks easy, but it's not simple. Every head is a world."
Cuban Proverb
Thanks to the authors.
"We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit."
Aristotle
"Nothing is more harmful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army superiority over another."
George Washington
"Success is a matter of understanding and religiously practicing specific, simple habits that always lead to success."
Robert J. Ringer
“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
"I never think of the future - it comes soon enough."
"Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invaribly they are both disappointed."
- Albert Einstein
“There is a theory which states that if ever for any reason anyone discovers what exactly the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another that states that this has already happened.”
- Douglas Adams
A few years ago, I thought only Apple could build amazingly stunning laptop computers. They still do, but along with the rest of the world catching up with them quickly.
Nowadays a glance at the lined up personal computers in any mall reveals elegant and also efficient designs from PC manufacturers all over the world, Taiwan, China, Europe, India - you name it.
Here below are some of the laptops. Thanks to all the websites for the information. The consumer has a lot of choices, depending on her/his usage needs. Looking at all this 'The World is Flat' , the book by Thomas Friedman comes to my mind.
eee pc - costs $400 - a 7" portable PC
tablet + notebook from HP
interesting colors from Sony
the legendary thinkpad also goes "landscape"
apple never rests! the new mac airbook that could be slided in an envelope under the door
“The only guide to man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.” - Winston Churchill
Thanks to HIM and thinkexist.com
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
A thoughtful note from Shakespeare. Thanks to him and wisdomquotes for the online version.
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. - Abraham Lincoln
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
- Anais Nin
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
- Winston Churchill
Thanks to the authors for their ideas and to wisdomquotes for the online version.
I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
- Helen Keller
The heights by great men reached and kept / Were not attained by sudden flight, / But they, while their companions slept, / Were toiling upward in the night.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing: -- "Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade.
- Rudyard Kipling
I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
- - Vaclav Havel
Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
- Thomas Alva Edison
Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tribute to the authors, for living their quotes and leaving it to us to use.
Thanks to www.wisdomquotes.com for the online version of the quotes.
Thanks to www.afb.org for the image of Helen Keller. Thanks to Wikpedia for all other images.
I was preparing for an exam, where I came across a Japanese theory on Quality. The author, an american, appreciated how the Japanese looked at quality as incremental, doable ( realistic ) improvements.
Intrigued by that theory, I googled for 'Rebuilding of Japan'. How could they have re-build the country?
I came across http://www.lib.umd.edu/prange/html/exhibit/censorship.jsp
Interesting site with concise information on the post war Japan. You may want to read.
I was surprised to learn about Einstein's insights into life. Having memorized procedures in my school's science lab and executed them, no wonder I thought scientists to be machine minded, when I was young :-)
I came across a beautiful, insightful essay by Einstein, thanks to one of my friends. The title of the essay is 'The world as I see it'. Here below is an excerpt of that essay.
Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me.The complete essay can be read at http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay.htm.
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