4 TRUTHS AND A CONTEST FOR YOU
4 TRUTHS AND A CONTEST FOR YOU
Happy Rosh Hashanah! Not to get all self-helpie, but Wayne Dyer’s obituary, the first thing I read after a 12-day trip, ending in Buffalo for my 50th Bennett High reunion, makes me want to share a truth of his and several others and end with contest.
1.“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Dyer’s reoccurring line and theme throughout his career.
My hometown and my relatives and friends there have already changed. My family, too. An ongoing process. For the better. I don’t remember who said there’s nothing out there—it’s all between ourselves and ourselves– but Shakespeare put it differently with. . .
2.“There’s nothing either right or wrong, but thinking makes it so.” Hamlet
3.On D.H. Lawrence’s birthday last Friday, I came upon this quote of his: “No form of love is wrong, so long as it is love, and you yourself honour what you are doing. Love has an extraordinary variety of forms! And that is all that there is in life, it seems to me.”
4.I just reading a beautiful collection, THE DOCTOR’S WIFE by Luis Jaramillo, a terrific writer and the New School writing department director. The humor, characters, and poignancy are splendid. A line near the end now sticks: “It’s all dumb luck,” the Doctor’s Wife says.
So much is dumb luck. Who are parents were. Where we were born. What abilities, gifts, traits, temperament, and physical attributes we were born with. And without. Who we stumbled upon. And when. BUT…what about our choices and what we did and did not do with our dumb luck? What about our loves, life’s work, friendships, ambitions, empathy, intelligence, sorrows, losses, the lack of these things, what changed us and what we changed? Is it ALL dumb luck? Or not?
Doesn’t dumb luck sometimes come from staying in the game? Your turn: Feel free to comment on whatever truths you wish.
And/or enter the following contest: In 50 words or less, comment on ‘dumb luck,’ or another of the above truths, or on one of your own favorites with an insight and example from your life. Entries due: Sept. 25. The winner will be announced here on Sept. 29 and get a prize.
You can comment and enter the contest. Please write if you’re doing either or both so I don’t get more confused than I am.
