This poem is by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.
***
Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through life:
'Tis the set of the soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
***
When my girls were growing up I would I say to them each morning, "Decide right now what kind of day you are going to have." I've tried to live that credo as well. It is not easy nor did I always achieve it but practicing that conscious decision made it easier to do over the years.
***
Now that I know I have cancer, it is even more important to set my sails and decide my own course as best as I can and not let the calm or the strife be what pushes me along. I hope I can do it. I have to try.
***
TRIVIA: Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American popular poet at the turn of the last century. (A popular poet is one that critics don't like but other people do.) Her most enduring work was "Solitude", which contains the lines: "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone". She also wrote the lines: "Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes" which was a line popularized by Jack Kerouac.
I couldn't figure out where else to post this but... I hope when you say you want to learn to cut something with a circular saw, that you don't mean your leg!!
ReplyDeleteOk - you sound like Corey and Dr. Gong. Why do guys always think chicks can't use guy tools? If I were a twelve year boy they would both be saying, "Come on son - it's time we do some circular saw stuff together.
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