Photo from OnBeing
As a gift to yourself (and in turn a gift to everyone else in your life) listen to Alain de Botton and Krista's conversation on "The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships." It's your assignment for the week.
Stubborn Gladness
A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
Jack Gilbert
Read more about Jack Gilbert and his work here.
Project Girl Crush
I first learned about Project Girl Crush when my friend April was featured on the site. Project Girl Crush "began as a reaction to the way women judge ourselves and each other" and features some very cool women in Seattle.
“Project Girl Crush tells a woman’s whole story. We believe that women should connect with one another more, and that the best connections are made through honesty. We believe in a world that listens to a woman’s story, complete with the enviable, the perfect, and also the flawed, the insecure, and the incompetent. Because telling the whole story is how we connect.”
Read more about the project here and then make your way through the list. Aran Goyoaga (whom I have long admired) is a favorite, as is local Seattle legend Linda Derschang, April Pride Allison, Rachel Demy and Linnea Gallo.