Every week on The Wisdom Daily, we bring you our favorite reads from sources around the web. Topics on this week’s list include celebrating Serena Williams, capturing precious moments, an atheist visiting Rome, and more. ?Whatever’s transpiring in your life, may you find the words of wisdom you need.
1. “All year Serena Williams kept coming, on a path more arduous than anyone knew, and she put together the best season by a woman in a quarter century…But that’s not the sole reason why we arrive, now, at this honor. It’s also because Williams kept pushing herself to grow, to be better, and tennis was the least of it. The trying is what’s impressive.”
– S. L. Price, “Serena Williams Is 2015’s Sportsperson of the Year” (Sports Illustrated)
2. “Love is a feeling we all have unless we block it, for no reason except fear. I am almost totally unblocked. And it’s great to feel love for everything around you.”
– Yoko Ono, on defeating fear (ImaginePeace.com)
3. “While his name has justifiably become synonymous with the design of America’s great public spaces, thinking of Frederick Law Olmsted as just a skilled landscape architect is like remembering Martin Luther King Jr. as just an eloquent speechwriter. Olmsted’s parks aren’t merely pretty places–they’re social arguments. They are some of the most important testing grounds for American democracy in action, places which express a confidence in our ability to recognize and promote the common good.”
– Garrett Dash Nelson, “Do Beautiful Parks Strengthen Democracy?” (Z?colo Public Square)
4. “When you work hard and have children, there’s a danger of becoming stuck in a vicious cycle of guilt. If you’re not neglecting one, you’re neglecting the other and whichever you’re paying attention to, you’re likely neglecting yourself – it’s very easy to allow the days to rocket by in a blur….My annual photo ritual is my effort to take those moments and preserve them, ready to be relived at any point, for the rest of my life.”
– Tamara Lohan, “A Photographic Memory” (The5PercentClub.com)
5. “People have asked me once or twice why I, an atheist, loved so much to visit Rome’s churches….[The] question did not merit a long response. Beauty is beauty in whatever form it presents itself.”
– Laurence de Loose, “An Atheist in Rome” (New England Review)
6. “When you are [truly] listening to someone, much of the quality of what you are hearing is your effect on them. Giving good attention to people makes them more intelligent. Poor attention makes them stumble over their words and seem stupid. Your attention, your listening, is that important.”
– Nancy Kline, “Learn How to Listen in a Radically Different Way” (Utne Reader)
Here at The Wisdom Daily (TWD), we feature spiritual insights on daily life, designed to help improve and enhance our relationships with ourselves, our families and the world around us.