In the last couple of weeks, there’s been a lot going on in our family.  Nothing I want to share here, but in the midst of it all, I found myself thinking of a book I read a short time back.  So this week, I’d like to share some of the gems I discovered in Elizabeth Berg’s The Year of Pleasures.

“Don’t let your habits become handcuffs.”

“Some mornings when I read the newspaper, I wanted to weep or pound my fists on the table in frustration.  Some mornings I actually did one or the other.  But museums offered up the other side of humanity: the glory and the grace.”

“But it seemed to me that this was the way we all lived:  full to the brim with gratitude and joy one day, wrecked on the rocks the next.  Finding the balance between the two was the art and the salvation.”

“I’m not talking about things that happen to you.  I’m talking about things you make happen.  I’m talking about purposefully doing one thing that brings you happiness every single day, in a very conscious way.  It builds up the arsenal.  It tips the balance.”

“Oh, nobody understands anything.  We’re all just here, blinking in the light like kittens.  The older I get, the more I see that nothing makes sense but to try to learn true compassion.”