Quotes of the Moment:

"We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken us a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are truly comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox."

"[...] I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered."

    --The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks
...

According to the first quote, Squiggly and I have been old for a long time already. There isn't anything in the world that could replace the silences with him on sunny Sunday afternoons. Sometimes I'll search out the presense of someone else, just so that I can share my quiet comtemplations with him or her, without ever really having to say anything. Everyone should be able to know the contentment of a comfortable silence.

Everyone should also know how to look at things through the eyes of a child. It's something we actually all know how to do, it's just that we forget to do it so easily. As adults--young or old--we are too quick to temper and too eager to judge, when really we should just be able to trust in the world around us. Not everything in the world today is out to cause us harm or pain or suffering, but sometimes--and a little too often--we seem to forget.