Fragile is the land, And so are the minds of men

...Maria, annoyed,says this is only further evidence of the Catholic - Protestant divide. This divide is best proven, she says, by the fact that Italians - including her own husband - can never make plans for the future, not even a week in advance. If you ask a protestant from the American Midwest to commit to a dinner date next week, that Protestant, believing that she is the captain of her own destiny, will say, "Thursday night works fine for me". But if you ask a Catholic from Calabria to make the same commitment, he will only shrug, turn his eyes to God, and ask, "How can any of us know whether we will be free for dinner next Thursday night, given that everything is in God´s hands and none of us can know our fate?"


pg 80,
Eat Pray Love
Elizabeth Gilbert







The Fourth Tuesday

We Talk About Death




(Morrie) "Everyone knows they're going to die," he said again, "but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently."

(Mitch) So, we kid ourselves about death, I said.



(Morrie) "Yes. But there's a better approach. To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living."


(Mitch) How can you ever be prepared to die?


(Morrie) "Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?"

He turned his head to his shoulder as if the bird were there now.

"Is today the day I die?" he said.....

"....once you learn how to die, you learn how to live."

I nodded.

"I'm going to say it again," he said, "Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live." He smiled, and I realized what he was doing. He was making sure I absorbed this point, without embarrassing me by asking. It was part of what made him a good teacher.



Eat pray love

pg 119


But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one´s life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favourite fountain?
And then to do it again the next day?