Words Worth
Keeping

There's an old saying, a grandmother kind of saying. Some days chicken, some days feather.

I don't need anybody to explain it. Some days you get the whole bird. Some days all you get is what's left blowing around the yard. Both are part of the deal, and neither one lasts.

What I like is that it doesn't tell you what to do about it. No five steps. No silver lining. It just tells you the truth and trusts you to handle it.

That's the kind of wisdom that came from people who didn't have time for long speeches. They had work to do. Five words and it covers about everything: the good years, the lean ones, the week the truck won't start.

I think about how much paper gets spent these days trying to say what that line says.

I'm writing it down for the feather days. And for the chicken days, so I remember.

Aldous Huxley spent some forty-five years studying people, and he said, roughly, that it was a bit embarrassing to have worked on the problem that long and find the best answer he had was to try to be a little kinder to each other.

I like that he called it embarrassing. A smart man expects a smart answer.

But I think that's the one that holds up. Not the theories. Not the arguments. Just being a little kinder than you strictly have to be, to whoever's in front of you.

Took him forty-some years. I figure I can get started this afternoon.

I came across a line I can't shake. A woman remembering that her grandpa couldn't hold her hand on a walk because he needed his hands to talk.

I knew that man the second I read it. Every family down here seems to have one. The story doesn't come out right unless the hands are going. Point at the field, show how big the fish was, wave off the part he doesn't want to get into.

She wasn't complaining about it. You can tell. That's the kind of thing you carry around because it was so much him.

Funny what sticks. Not the advice. The hands.

There's a Rumi line already at the bottom of this site. I'm not going to pretend I found it this week. The one that stopped me is different.

When you're happy, you go to the person you love. When you're sad, you go to someone who loves you.

Read it twice. Happy is a choice of company. Sad is a test of it. Most of us know which door we use. Fewer of us know who's on the other side of the second one.