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The Courage to Be Happy It's All in the Perception A Moment Like This The Train We Ride The Winter of Our Discontent Standing on the Edge As the Days Shorten A Moon That's the Colour of Bone An Attitude of Gratitude Belonging to Tomorrow, Missing Today
When the Weeds Take Over the Garden Practising Who You Are What We Get is What We Are Lighting A Candle The Blues of Spring The Path of Change Beating the Valentine's Day Blues A New Year, A New You 
A Sense of Joy
Just last weekend I was browsing in one of my favourite used book shops and came across a slim volume that unexpectedly held a small pressed flower. The book was old, its pages yellowed by time, and the flower was dry and faded.There was no way of knowing who had pressed that little flower between those pages, no inscription or distinguishing mark that might give a clue. It was simply there, resting patiently, a moment from someone's life, a memory, preserved and waiting.
Finding that small flower filled me with a warm feeling and a sense of joy.
It had been years since I last pressed a flower or a leaf between the pages of a book and, because flowers and books can so easily be lost to time,
I had thought that it was now only the memory of these things that remained.
And then, slowly, it dawned on me that there is something more than the memory that remains and lives within me. After all, what has not been lost is the joy that came with those flowers, the joy that made me reach out and press those leaves.
Everything that we have ever experienced is here inside us still. Time and the events of life can erase the circumstances and the surroundings, but it cannot remove the joy itself.
In truth, joy has no real need to be remembered. It is within us always and all we have to do is to recognise it, to allow it. It is there waiting as patiently as a flower pressed between the pages of a book.
Yes, the cover and the chapters will change, the colours will fade and the words will soften. But the joy itself is there within us, always fresh and new and waiting.
When we put joy into our lives and into the lives of others, it will always be there, and it will last far longer than even the prettiest of flowers.
Why not choose to do something today that will bring joy, something which will allow joy?
After all, the flowers that are pressed inside your heart can never fade.
" It will never rain roses. When we want to have more roses,
we must plant more roses"
George Eliot
we must plant more roses"
George Eliot
Copyright © 2009 Peter Field - All rights reserved.
Reproduction in any form is prohibited
Reproduction in any form is prohibited
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