“People don’t talk about the soul much anymore. It’s so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you’re sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you’ve gotten back the test results and they’re not so good.
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red tail hawk circles over water or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our minutes.
It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kid’s eyes, the way a melody rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live.
Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby’s ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy.
And think of life as a terminal illness. Because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived.”
~Anna Quindlen | Graduation Speech | Villanova 2002
