If you’re in need of a good getting-back-up-after-falling-down story—one that warms your heart, reminds you of your humanity, and helps you let go of the past so you can bounce forward—I’ve got one for you. I just watched the film adaptation of Katherine Center’s Happiness for Beginners, and felt inspired to share this quote with you:
“All-knowing Mother,” he said, with his head bowed. “I’m sorry human beings are such a blight. I’m sorry we litter your earth and choke the fish in your oceans with plastic grocery sacks. We have been given incomprehensible beauty on this earth, but we don’t see it. We walk around angry and blind and ungrateful. I wish we were better, our dumb human race, but I don’t have much hope that we ever will be. The best I can do today is say: Thank you for this world of miracles. We will try to be more grateful. And less ridiculous.” ― Beckett
The best we can do is want to be better. So humbly wise.
I was also moved by the Pablo Neruda poem that played a significant part of the story:
One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII
I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
We are always loved just as we are, even if we don't realize it.
