Quote of the Day - 03/16/2012

Illusions are perhaps as countless as relationships between people, or between people and things. - Charles Baudelaire in The Parisian Prowler: Le spleen de Paris: petits poe`mes en prose

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The quote today is from a book about 1850s Paris…but applies far beyond that time and place…maybe it is a universal.

Our day to day assumption is that we thoroughly understand our reality but there are so many things that don’t neatly fit our understanding. The reality we understand is only our perspective and even that can change over time. There is no absolute reality. So - we need to internalize the idea from this quote - that ‘illusions are perhaps as countless as relationships’ and be resilient enough to accommodate even those dynamic illusions into our perception of reality.

Some people do this quite naturally. They are the ones we say have good ‘people sense’ or ‘people skills’ - somehow they see perspectives of others more keenly and the actions they take reflect it. Others have to make a conscious effort to seek the perspective of others. Some find it very difficult to the see another’s perspective at all.

Today - think about the relationships important to you and how you are responding to the ‘illusions’ in them.

The Luxuries in Life

What is your unique perception of luxury? Suspend the outside influences on your perception (and there are a lot of them so this can take some effort).

When I did this for myself recently – I was surprised that the luxuries of my life are plentiful and often easily achieved. Here’s my list: 

1. Seeing a beautiful sunrise or sunset and not having to rushing off to some other activity (picture at right is a rainbow at sunset)
2. Confident enough of food availability to not eat excessively – ever
3. Dark chocolate for breakfast
4. Visiting my daughter on my birthday
5. Hot tea on a cold day
6. Having time to celebrate or grieve rather than soldiering on bravely
7. Spending the majority of my day on things I choose
8. A new computer that is working exactly the way I want it to
9. Beauty and function in the same object like the leaf coaster I have in my office (picture on right)
10. Naturally long fingernails  

Analyzing my list of 10, I discovered some themes: 

• Food (2, 3, 5)
• Relationships (4, 6)
• Visual beauty (1, 9, 10)
• Choices (7,8) 

Recognizing and acknowledging the luxury in life is closely linked to feelings of thankfulness and happiness for me. Maybe this exercise of taking a snapshot of luxuries is worth doing more often!