short takes

Dh read in a magazine this week that there is a woman who has been sitting in front of the White House every day for the past thirty years to protest nuclear proliferation.  We were both stunned.  Thirty years!  She is missing her life.  Life is meant to be lived.  Is there any idea, any opinion that is worth giving that up?

Kindess, a topic that keeps cropping up on several of the blogs I follow.  It is important to be kind-- a friend of mine told me once that is the sum total of her moral code.  It's not a bad one.  I've been learning recently, though, that there is a difference between being kind and being a doormat.  Being kind is an intentional act, a decision to respond in a certain way because of who you are, or who you want to be.  Being a doormat is letting other people do what they want because it's easier than arguing.  Someone creases the fender of your car and you decide to let it go and not make them pay.  You're being a doormat if you're doing it because you just don't have the energy to argue with them.  You're being kind if you do it out of generosity, out of compassion.  What do you think?  does that make sense?  that is a relatively new thought for me, so I haven't figured it all the way out yet.

I'm getting better.  I'm still sick, but the cough is much improved, and as long as I keep taking advil, I seem to do OK.  But I'm not doing well enough to sit here for 45 minutes today, so I think that is all.