It's a Classical Life

I  found this quote by Anais Nin in a book I've been reading lately called An Authentic  Life: Finding Meaning and Spirituality in Everyday Life by Caroline Jones. Jones was an Australian journalist who died in 2022, aged 84. This book has been quite a powerful read for me and I hope to share more of it with you in the coming weeks. Perhaps Nin's quote can be taken quite harshly, but when broken down it makes a lot of sense. We often feel that we are in a position where we can't change, where we  are a victim to our circumstances, or that things are simply outside of our control.  Whether or not this state is one that we would willing choose for ourselves or not is  relevant. The fact that we  choose  to remain in it, is very relevant. For the longest  time I felt like I could not leave teaching. It was a position I had chosen for myself,  but when it was no longer working for me, I slowly felt like a part of me was dying I nside. I wasn't ha...

  Have you ever noticed when a word or a saying comes to your attention, and then suddenly you're hearing or seeing it everywhere? This is exactly what happened with me over this last week with this week's quote. The more things change the more they stay the same.  It's an old-fashioned quote, one often used by the elders in our community. Those who have lived through a long life, and paid attention! It is often used in relation to social issues or politics but I think it can be applied to so many areas of our life.  As a historian and avid reader of the classics and historical non-fiction, I can see so many patterns that are repeated - whether that be due to human nature, social movements or simply the tendency that history has to repeat itself. Sometimes these are on a personal level - I myself claim to change but continue to fall into the same habits of the past. Or they can be on a bigger scale - schools and churches make new promises only to ...