Loved It!Each year at Christmas, as we sit around our family table sharing good cheer, I read this adaptation of excerpts from "A Thousand Days in Tuscany." by Marlena De Blasi to remind my family about what is really important in life. It talks of the "old Italian ways", but the sentiment rings true today. I want to share it this year with you .....my Innspiring family. Merry Christmas, one and all!
Thoughts at Christmas, 2015
They say life was better when it was harder. They say food tasted better laid down over hunger and that there’s nothing more wonderful than watching every sunrise and every sunset.
They say that working to the sweat, eating your share, sleeping a child’s sleep, is what life was meant to be.
They say they don’t understand this avid bent to accumulate things you can’t eat or drink or wear or use to keep warm. They remember when accumulating meant gathering three sacks of chestnuts instead of two.
They say their neighbors have lost the capacity to imagine and to feel, some of them, the capacity to love.
They say since we all have everything and we all have nothing, our only task is to keep searching to understand the rhythm of things. Light, dark. The seasons. Live gracefully in plenty and live gracefully in need. Embrace them both or swindle yourself out of half a life.
Maybe the only thing that matters is to make our lives last as long as we do. You know, to make a life last until it ends, to make all the parts come out even, like when you rub the last piece of bread in the last drop of oil on your plate and eat it with the last sip of wine in your glass.
Adapted from A Thousand Days In Tuscany-Marlena De Blasi.
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