Are you looking or making?

Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful. Hazrat Inayat Khan

Would you believe I think this is one of the most beautiful places in the world? Oh sure it has it's ugly spots, it has its dark places, it has its grief but it also has great beauty. Why in the world do I think that? Why do I look at this and long to be there? Because some of the people who live in this slum in East Africa (Mathare Valley, Kenya) have made this place beautiful. They have walked in the dark places, they have touched the ugly spots, they have grieved with the sad and they have introduced beauty to the inhabitants of this place. They looked for a beautiful place in this valley and couldn't find it so instead of moving on they began to introduce beauty. They didn't give up on this place or it's people, they worked - they are still working! - to bring beauty and make it beautiful.

Can't find the beautiful place? How about introducing beauty to the place you are standing in now? Don't go searching for beautiful elsewhere, make the place you are in beautiful!

Comments

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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