believe, along with many emotion theorists, that shyness is a basic human emotion, a blend of fear and interest, that we all experience. I also think that because human vulnerability is finally becoming a topic that is more openly discussed in the U.S., and because we are beginning to accept the idea that we all are shy sometimes, particularly when things are important to us, and that we cannot be intimate if we are not vulnerable, that we all may begin to be able to disarm and truly value and appreciate each other.
Autumn time in Essex where we drove When farmers burned the stubble of the corn The earth itself was fiery like young love The smokey air rose like a cloud new born
The Kentish landlocked cliffs are wide and steep The farmers grow their grain on land beneath And there too we have seen the holy fire The flames and smoke arrest me with desire
The earth and soil, the harvest we find there Give me joy both full of wheat or bare Why did burning stubble make me glow? These images affect the heart’s deep core
Now fires are banned., they damage our pure air And I did not like the murder of the hare
My old blue fountain pen allows The ink across this page to flow Like wet paint from an artist’s brush, And words come in a rush. Enchanted by the hand that writes . Bewitched by art,beauty alights The script is like a music score Through which we step as through a door, Imagination’s home. As,mysteriously, to you, to me, The spirits of our hearts are tamed , By rhythms of pen,of brush, of mind, They enter vision quite unplanned, Like moths to flutter softly round Fire joined heart and hand The pen slows down,the hand grows still, And ,just as dreams at daybreak will, They shrink,they disappear,they’re gone Like dew dies in hot sun
1.Joy is not “toxic positivity.” It does not insist that we pretend things are better than they are. It does not refuse to face grief or sorrow. But it does say that they are not all there is and that they are not all that needs to be faced.