This year I leave you not with a deliriously stupid new years resolution (that I would most likely not follow through on anyway because heck a girl's gotta eat and drink right?) no this year I want to leave you with a few quotes from a book I just read that truly every one should read. You may take from these quotes what you will or you may take nothing at all and think I am, again, full of drivel. Be that as it may, these quotes made me think a bit and I felt the need to share. From The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce:
"Harold walked with these strangers and listened. He judged no one, although as the days wore on and time and places began to melt, he couldn't remember if the tax inspector wore no shoes or had a parrot on his shoulder. It no longer mattered. He had learned that it was the smallness of people that filled him with wonder and tenderness, putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time. Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human."
"Harold sat in silence. The silver-haired gentleman was in truth nothing like the man Harold had first imagined him to be. He was a chap like himself, with a unique pain; and yet there would be no knowing that if you passed him in the street, or sat opposite him in a cafe and did not share his teacake. Harold pictured the gentleman on a station platform, smart in his suit, looking no different from anyone else. It must be the same all over England. People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The inhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that."
"Harold walked the towns that were full of the sounds of other people, and the roads that traveled the land between, and he understood moments from his life as if they had only just occurred. Sometimes he believed he had become more memory than present. He replayed scenes from his life, like a spectator trapped on the outside. Seeing the mistakes, the inconsistencies, the choices that shouldn't have been made, and yet unable to do anything about them."
To my amazing, unique friends I thank you for all your love and laughter throughout the years. Your unending support means the world to me and the stories you share are infinitely priceless. I raise my proverbial glass to toast you and wish you all a fantastic 2013! (And for those of you who think I have hit the "man I love you" stage of drink? No, the party hasn't started yet!)
