Hi everyone,
I was leafing through an old poetry book of mine this morning. One that contains several poems very special to me.
It’s another book that’s been with me for a long time, and I was really surprised to notice on the dust jacket that its price was quoted in old time shillings, (15 shillings to be exact), together with its decimal equivalent of 75 pence.
I was shocked. 75 pence is such a measly sum now. But when the book was published, around the start of decimalisation in the 1960s, its equivalent 15 shillings was a significant amount of money. I looked it up and the average wage back then was less than £10 a week!
Anyway, I’m digressing. It made me wonder what others had said about surprise and finding the unexpected.
In the end I chose this quotation from Alan Watts, (a well-known writer, speaker and Buddhist teacher).
“The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance”
I think that if you want to protect yourself from the worst effects of change, that’s a good idea. Resistance usually does end up being futile. We either join the maelstrom and get swept along with it, or get left behind to sink and drown.
And I think that applies to the current crisis too. We didn’t want it to happen. We hate it and all of the new restrictions suddenly placed on us, but we’ve had no option but to accept and get on with things as they are and not as we wanted them to be.
Hope you have a good day and maybe even a good surprise or two!
(Photo Roger Bradshaw Unsplash.com)
Quotation for Saturday 23rd May 2020