When We Ripen

If ours isn’t a true friendship, maybe it’s because we aren’t really listening to each other.

From Emerson’s journal, 1869: In the heavy storm I heard the cathedral bells squeaking like pigs through the snout.

Time and energy given to hurt feelings is time and energy taken from feeling compassion for the person you think has hurt them — the result being, there are two feeling hurt instead of one, or none. Multiply this hurt by one hundred, one thousand, or many million, and it isn’t hard to understand how there can be so much unhappiness and suffering in the world. Ask yourself: Is being the hero and victim in this story I’m telling myself worth the grief and sorrow it brings? Do I really want to carry this burden? And isn’t it selfish and cruel to expect or want others to carry it too?

If we don’t want a heavily polluting industrial poultry farm to be built nearby, why are we still buying and eating chickens?

When fruit ripens, it falls. When thoughts ripen, they rise and become part of the atmosphere. When we ripen, we remember the use of our wings.

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