Susan's Thursday note July 25, 2024
The Traveler by Daren Simkin (A Traveler packing up "time" constantly searching for true happiness)
Quotes on living for today not always waiting for tomorrow.
Good morning! Silence this morning. Still trees. A few moments of coolness to pretend it’s fall before heat enters the scene. My angel of dawn faithfully shows her kind face holding a small rose. Encouraging me to notice the little flowers by the side of the road today. Encouraging me to hear the little birds working on their choral lessons this morning. Beauty. Always beauty if we only take a few moments to notice.
I pull again a favorite from my shelves for us all to think on today. The Traveler by Daren Simkin. This is a little book about a young boy that decides to pack up his “time” and travel until he finds true happiness. No matter where he ends up in his travels (each location seemingly “perfect” at first) he finds something wrong. Something that doesn’t provide him with complete happiness. On his pursuit for perfect life, he walks and walks, sleeps and sleeps, with his suitcase full of his packed time at his side, always believing that this suitcase would continue holding “time” for him until he opened it when he found the perfect life.
“My time is safe in my suitcase, I can never go wrong – Soon I’ll find something perfect to spend it all on…” Nearing the end of the fable he finds himself an old man, lonely. He comes back (after circling the earth) to his original home, his original friends, now old. “I have decided to spend my time: my decades, my years, my months, my weeks, and my days, my hours, my minutes, and my seconds, too. I am ready to spend them all, and I want to spend them at home, with friends. With you.”
He opens the suitcase that he lugged his entire life believing that he will find his entire time that he began with in the suitcase. Only one month fell out to the ground. He searched everywhere – where were his decades, his years? He doesn’t understand. He then realizes to save time was an impossible pursuit. He realizes that he only has one month left to his life. With the diagnosis of death so soon, with time so wasted searching for perfect relationships, perfect surroundings, perfect work scenarios, he takes on the final month of his life. “Come sit next to me, said his friend. He spends his final month listening to his friends discussing marvelous things they experienced in their lives, realizing he has no such memories.”
The final question in the fable, “Does anyone know what life would be like if you kept all your time?” Only the traveler knew this answer, and he discussed the emptiness of his travels searching for perfect happiness. He spent his last month surrounded by his friends. Loved. Not in an environment of all perfection, but worth savoring and appreciating.
Below are quotes on living for the day…not the future. Being aware of what we do have, not concentrating wholly on our losses or what we never received for this lifetime. On finding meaning in our daily lives. I hope these inspire you as they have me.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It has been well said that no person ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burdens of today that the weight is more than a person can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourself so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God’s. He begs that the weight is more than a person can bear. Never load yourselves, so, my friends. If you find yourself so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God’s. He begs you to leave the future to Him and mind the present. George MacDonald
To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; to approach my work with a clean mind; to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the Ultimate Purpose toward which I am working; to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; to be gentle, kind and courteous through all the hours; to approach the night with weariness that woos sleep and the joy that comes from work well done – this is how I desire to waste wisely my days. Thomas Dekker 1570-1671
Would’st shape a noble life?
Then cast No backward glances toward the past,
And though somewhat be lost and gone,
yet do thou act as one new-born;
What each day needs, that shalt thou ask,
Each day will set its proper tasks. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I expect to pass through the world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness or abilities that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. William Allen Penn
Live for today. Multitudes of people have failed to live for today…What they have had within their grasp today they have missed entirely, because only the future has intrigued them. William Allen Penn
You wake up in the morning, and lo! Your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life. It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. Arnold Bennett
I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light but who see nothing in sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. It were far better to sail forever in the night of blindness with sense, and feeling, and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing. The only lightless dark is the night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility. Helen Keller
When I see someone smile, I know immediately that he or she is dwelling in awareness. This half-smile, how many artists have labored to bring it to the lips of countless statues and paintings? I am sure the same smile must have been on the faces of the sculptors and painters as they worked. Can you imagine an angry painter giving birth to such a smile? Yet even a smile like that is enough to relax all the muscles in our face, to banish all worries and fatigue. A tiny bud of a smile on our lips nourishes awareness and calms us miraculously. It returns us to the peace we thought we had lost. Thich Nhat Hanh
You know of the disease in Central Africa called sleeping sickness…There also exists a sleeping sickness of the soul. Its most dangerous aspects that one is unaware of its coming. That is why you have to be careful. As soon as you notice the slightest sign of indifference, the moment you become aware of the loss of a certain seriousness, of longing, of enthusiasm and zest, take it as a warning. You should realize your soul suffers if you live superficially. Albert Schweitzer
For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine, but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano and play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. Pau Casals (composer 1876-1973)
Can we learn from the composer? To begin each morning with two pieces of music (music to each of us may be listening to songs, watching flowers try to open, looking over a field, watching a child sleep, listening to the two birds rehearsing). Begin every morning seeking immediately something beautiful. A decision to have this be first each morning? Thank you for letting me enter your Thursdays and for entering our store. I hope I’m working when you come in, but if I’m not – how much your business means. Have a beautiful end of your week. The birds are singing nearby…listen. They are singing for you. The little flowers are opening nearby. Notice. They are opening to encourage you and bring you beauty. Susan
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Latin for this week:
Vita non est vivere sed valere vita est – Life is more than merely staying alive.
Works Cited:
Simkin, Daren. The Traveler. 2008. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York.