dual personalities

“I look back on my life like a good day’s work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.”

Wise words from Grandma Moses, who was born Anna Mary Robertson on this day in 1860. She died in 1961 at the age of 101. Having worked hard all her life, she then became famous as a renowned folk artist in her seventies. You can read her obituary here.

P.S. In looking around the internet, I found that everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt and Marilyn Monroe to Hannah Montana are credited with saying, “Life is what you make it!” Several books have been written with this title. I guess cliches are like that.

Well, anyway, here’s a poem from Mary Oliver:

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Discuss among yourselves.