Everything Is Borrowed (The Streets)

Can it seriously be a week since I last posted? - what's up with that?!?

I plead the too-busy-for-words defense - I've said a bazillion times that I lead a very deadline-driven life. Much as I'm trying to scrape some responsibilities/obligations off my proverbial plate, it's just not happening right now... in some cases because I haven't trained/found successors for the jobs I'm attempting to leave - I must get more serious if I want to do things differently...

And I do... but I'm not following through as much as I should (nutrition, exercise, time management, friendships, etc.) - one of my favorite quotes: "insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results". I could go on about all the things I've done (and am continuing to do) wrong - instead I will just say, "own it, Susan!"... then snap out of crazy mode and make it happen...

At the urging of a friend (thanks, F!), I've finally s*bscribed to NPR's Song of the Day, which led me to today's blog post-title tune - it's a bit long for a mantra... but maybe a credo... or an affirmation... or a gospel?... :-)

More on the group/song here - enjoy... and take it to heart...

P.S. SMM here, here, here, here, here and here - whew!

SONG: Everything Is Borrowed by The Streets (YouTube video with lyrics here)...

BOOK: Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential... in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta

POEM: For the Unknown Self by John O'Donohue

So much of what delights and troubles you

Happens on a surface

You take for ground.

Your mind thinks your life alone,

Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor,

Yet it seems that a little below your heart

There houses in you an unknown self

Who prefers the patterns of the dark

And is not persuaded by the eye's affection

Or caught by the flash of thought.

It is a self that enjoys contemplative patience

With all your unfolding expression,

Is never drawn to break into light

Though you entangle yourself in unworthiness

And misjudge what you do and who you are.

It presides within like an evening freedom

That will often see you enchanted by twilight

Without ever recognizing the falling night,

It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:

All you do and say and think is fostered

Deep in its opaque and prevenient clay.

It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease

That is not ruffled by disappointment;

It presides in a deeper current of time

Free from the force of cause and sequence

That otherwise shapes your life.

Were it to break forth into day,

Its dark light might quench your mind,

For it knows how your primeval heart

Sisters every cell of your life

To all your known mind would avoid,

Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,

Offering you only discrete glimpses

Of how you construct your life.

At times, it will lead you strangely,

Magnetized by some resonance

That ambushes your vigilance.

It works most resolutely at night

As the poet who draws your dreams,

Creating for you many secret doors,

Decorated with pictures of your hunger;

It has the dignity of the angelic

That knows you to your roots,

Always awaiting your deeper befriending

To take you beyond the threshold of want,

Where all your diverse strainings

Can come to wholesome ease.

QUOTE(S): "Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of." ~ Charles Richards

"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life." ~ Fr. Alfred D'Souza