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...

  There has been so much written about how to live well and how to live a simple life over the centuries. Some of our best sources of inspiration come from spiritual and religious texts - people who, centuries ago, had time to contemplate and meditate such existential questions. This week's inspiration comes from a contemporary spiritual writer - Joan Chittester . Chittester belongs to the order of Benedictine sisters and has written so much on spirituality, how to live well, religion, social issues and more. Recently I started reading her book, Becoming Fully Human, from which I have taken this week's quote. I hope it speaks it to as much as it did to me at this time.  I have made a lot of changes recently in my life and I am striving hard for a more simple life. I think what was missing though was this thought of Chittister's. I was making many physical and situational changes but not really addressing my own heart and reaction to the myriad of things that life brings. Th...