Hauntingly relevant ancient Mesoptamian Proverbs about love and friendship

A mere friend will agree with you, but a real friend will argue. ~ Assyrian Proverb Tell me your friends, and I’ll tell you who you are. ~ Assyrian Proverb Friendship is for the day of trouble, posterity for the future. ~ Babylonian Proverb What comes from the heart is known by the heart. ~Continue reading “Hauntingly relevant ancient Mesoptamian Proverbs about love and friendship”

10 Uplifting Things I Found on the Internet This Week #8

Here are some randomisities both old and new that I found this week and wanted to share with you. Take 1 or two with a cup of tea and a few buttered scones and have a good lie down if you want to have a break from the world for a while. 1. In theContinue reading “10 Uplifting Things I Found on the Internet This Week #8”

10 Uplifting things I found on the internet this week #5

The Kindness Economy Kindness isn’t weak but strong: a foundation from which to grow a business that has truth, integrity, longevity and commerciality. As we move away from a time of rabid consumerism and ‘peak stuff,’ we are entering a new type of economy. One built on kindness and a Triple Bottom Line: people, planet and profitContinue reading “10 Uplifting things I found on the internet this week #5”

The odds in favour of you being born were slim

“Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff.”

Infinite attention, infinite regard and the minor deities of the internet

“That’s the dream of replication: infinite attention, infinite regard. The machinery of the internet has made it a democratic possibility, as television never could, since the audience in their living rooms necessarily far outnumbered the people who could be squeezed into the box. Not so with the internet, where anyone with access to a computerContinue reading “Infinite attention, infinite regard and the minor deities of the internet”

On silence and idleness

“Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.” Virginia Woolf, The Waves Time Moves Slow by Bad Bad Good “Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness fromContinue reading “On silence and idleness”

You have sprung from soil in which you are a stranger

A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa, Born in the west, far from the land of palms. I said to it: How like me you are, far away and in exile, In long separation from family and friends. You have sprung from soil in which you are a stranger; And I, like you,Continue reading “You have sprung from soil in which you are a stranger”

A flower

A flower’s fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar. Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth. We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel youngContinue reading “A flower”