One more feature on my blogging schedule - a quotation every Wednesday. Why Wednesday, of all days? Well, in my prehistoric working life Wednesdays were always the worst days - they were the longest. And I changed jobs several times! Besides, it's in the middle of the week, it's like a breaking point - if you drag yourself through Wednesday, you can draw a sigh of relief and look forward to the weekend already.
I'm an avid reader (well, or used to be, in the BB time, that is, Before Baby), and I've always collected quotes from books I've read. Inspirational, philosophical, or just strikingly similar to my own thoughts - I think I have already accumulated volumes, if I really put it alltogether. And then I even moved on to the movies, thanks to DVDs, otherwise you have to be pretty darn quick to jot down what catches your attention.
This time it will be a movie - Eat, Pray, Love, you know, where Julia Roberts is gorging herself on Italian food and then goes to India to detox (well, that's my version, somewhat simplified). Honestly, I haven't seen the entire movie yet, somehow I haven't been able to see it to the end, mainly due to disturbances of a baby-ish kind. Well, anyway, I've seen enough to hear a story about an old Italian man, who every day goes to church and begs a statue: Dear statue, please, please, please, let me win a lottery. One day an exasperated statue comes to life and says: Dear man, please, please, please, buy a lottery ticket. I was so astounded by this that I'm actually not able to find any words, and yet something is bubbling inside every time I think about it and has to be put into those so-hard-to-find words.
I mean, it's so obvious, isn't it, that if you want to win a lottery you have to start somewhere? Like, buying the damn ticket? BUT THEN, IF IT'S SO OBVIOUS, WHY DO WE FORGET IT ALL THE TIME????? This wisdom is international - don't expect favours raining down on you while you are enjoying a siesta on your backyard. You have to work, just to get that very backyard. And then to work some more, to be able to have a siesta. And maybe to afford a comfy chair to stretch out on. And a gardener, to mow your lawn... But I'm deviating. I guess I can call myself a fatalist, though not necessarily in a pessimistic way - I do believe that we have a path to travel, and yes, some bad things have to happen to us too, but they are stepping stones, lessons to be learned. In the end you will get your reward. There's only one teeny-tiny catch: you don't know from the start how hard you must try. Oh, if we could know everything beforehand, life would have been so much easier, don't you think? (And so exceedingly boring, too).
But reading about this statue, so annoyed by the human stupidity, made me contemplate about my own life. Have I done enough? Do I sit idly and wait for things to happen? (well, some events, and wonderful, marvelous, long expected and almost given up on DID occur without any interference on my side whatsoever, but I see it more as an exception).
P.S. Yesterday I've started reading Eat, Pray, Love. Only a few pages, and she's already my guru. Elizabeth Gilbert, here I come!