Lonely Cottage

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  “Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south-west. If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd. Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county-town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who “conceive and meditate of ple...

Smell Those Roses!

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 How many times have you done something you did not want to do? It’s easy to do what we plan to do, or like to do. We do things we do not want to do only because those things must be done, as a matter of responsibility, and because we did not plan or like it, it’s easier not to like it, so we make it difficult for ourselves. 

Nobody likes to sit in a traffic jam. We suddenly become late for an appointment, late to work, late for a movie. But what is the cause of the problem? A horrible accident? An overpass sign fell off its scaffold and crashed into the highway below? Construction work? Two of those three options are unavoidable. The last one is. So why complain? Take advantage of the new-found time you always wished you had! Smell those roses!



Upset that your flight is 15 minutes, 30 minutes, late? In some parts of the world, flights are every other day, or less. Is your train a few minutes late? The guy who fell on the tracks might be relieved!

Getting upset or angry at a situation does not make the situation any easier. The situation does not care about what I think or feel. Sure, it’s inconvenient, imposing, but the situation has obligations to meet, and that is all. As the old saying goes, “might as well get happy about it.”

Someone may be in a much worse situation than you find yourself in your little inconvenient one. 

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