It's (the last) feel good Friday!

It is the last Friday of 2007 and the last ever Feel Good Friday on What Tami Said. I began this regular feature as a way to ensure that my blog didn't descend into a morass of negativity. But I think the blog has evolved since its early days (really just four months ago) and I am more balanced in the topics I cover. (Thanks to Hochma and Musar's Week of Positive Blogging for setting me on a more enlightened track.) I don't think it is necessary to designate Friday in particular as a day to share positive stories and insights.

 

So, as my final Feel Good Friday post, I thought I would share a favorite passage by Walt Whitman from his preface to Leaves of Grass. When I first read these words, I was exhilarated. This is how I want to live my life! The quote is printed on a magnet in my kitchen. The old rubber looks dull against the bright, white refrigerator, but I can't take it down. The words are too important.

 

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul, and your flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body..."