Coffee Education

I recently received this e-mail-I thought it was interesting!

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.When all the alumni had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups.Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in the cup.So, don't let the cups drive you - enjoy the coffee instead."

Quote of the Day- “One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others” -Lewis Carroll

The Writer Within

I have spent long hours in my life contemplating what I am supposed to be when I grow up. I’m 38 and still thinking it over…

All my life I have clung to literature and writing. The written word has always been a friend to me. The only thing closer to me than reading was to write the words myself. Sometimes I would hear a soft sound in my ear saying You’re a writer but I don’t think I could quite hear it. In school I wasn’t the best student but when it came to English Lit and Creative Writing I was in heaven-always A’s and B’s. In both high school and college, I had instructors say “Maybe you should do something with your writing skills.” I thought to myself “What would I do?” and again the soft sound in my ear You’re a writer. When life dealt harder times I turned to notebooks and journals. When I had emotional things to say to people-I said it in letters and notes. The soft sound was still there whispering you’re a writer but I wouldn’t listen. I wasn’t a writer. Writers were edgy, artsy figures. They backpacked across Europe, they lived and breathed Hemingway, they were loners, they were rebels, they defied the system, they were observers of life, they had Masters degrees, they were PUBLISHED. Writers weren’t thirty-something, middle-class mothers from the Midwest--car pooling to soccer practice and meeting with the PTA. That’s not a writer! Is it? I had to stop and think about that. What is a writer? Could I be a writer? And if I were a writer-what would people think? What if I never got published? Or worse, what if I DID get published?! What if they didn’t like my stuff? All the what if’s. Finally I give in and say to myself “what the heck, I’ll try it on for size.”

“I’m a writer” I say aloud to myself in the mirror. “I’m a writer” I whisper to myself as I fall asleep at night. “I’m a writer” I say to myself as I wash the dinner dishes. “What did you say Mom?” I didn’t know my 8 year old was standing there. So I sheepishly repeat “I said I’m a writer.” She stares for a moment. And then “Mom, you’re not a writer-you have to be an author of a book to be a writer.” And so I kneel down to her level and say “That’s not really true, honey. I write stories and articles, I write my thoughts down in several ways, I send my work on to publishers once in awhile and I.....you know what.. it’s not really about that. Being a writer isn’t as much about what you do as who you are.” And then the light bulb comes on in my head. That’s what the soft sound was. I’m not supposed to BE a writer. I was BORN a writer because it is how I organize my thoughts and make sense of the world around me. It’s not what I do, it’s who I am. It doesn’t matter if it’s ever seen, it doesn't matter if no one likes it, it doesn’t even matter if it’s any good. It’s just me-plain and simple-that’s all. She says, staring at me eagerly with big blue eyes “Mom, I'm like you. I write lots of stories and I write in my journal all the time. i love to write” So I lean over and whisper in her ear “Then you’re a writer too…”

Quote of the Day- “Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”

What I'm Currently Reading

Beowulf-A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
If you had to read this epic poem in high school and were bored out of your mind, this translation is fabulous. You might want to try this classic once more.

A Short History of the American Revolution by James L. Stokesbury
It seems like an oxymoron to have the words "short" and "American Revolution" in the same title but somehow this author makes it work.

The Davinci Code by Dan Brown
I know, I know, it's about time I got around to this one!! Better late than never!

Quote of the Day-"The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it."- Elizabeth Drew