There are many personal journals on the world wide web - people sharing the intimacies of their lives and the wonder of their minds with a very interested and eager public. It has nothing to do with voyeurism and almost everything to do with sharing a sense of being. One of the longest running and most successful journals is that of   Willa Cline, and it is also where this quotation is from:

“So much of life is taken up with the mundane tasks of daily living. Buying and preparing food, then eating, cleaning up and taking out the garbage. Washing dishes. Mowing the yard. Writing checks to pay the bills, buying stamps, and mailing them off. Putting gas in the car. And on and on, day after day, ad infinitum. We read about other people accomplishing great things and we wonder how they have the time, or the energy. We envy them their lives, seemingly floating higher than the rest of us.

I remember a quote that I found a long time ago, and now I don't remember who said it: "Sometimes the greatest courage is not to die, but to live." At the time I was going through a period in my life where I felt that just living was a struggle, and it really spoke to me. It made me feel like my little life had meaning, that even though I couldn't seem to transcend the things that were holding me down, just the fact that I kept on living was an accomplishment, that there was bravery in accomplishing the tasks of daily life.

This piece came at exactly the right time for me because right now it seems that my life is so without accomplishment and that it may stay in this unaccomplished state for an undetermined time. Yet it is not. I accomplish so many finite little tasks throughout the day, little mundane things that make my day and my life flow from one moment to the next.

I am sure that when one looks back on the quiet times in one’s life, you see that there was accomplishment even in those ‘uneventful’ times. On days like today just living seems to be the greatest challenge and getting myself to survive these days will be a certain accomplishment. Tomorrow I will pay the parking fine I got today. The day after that I will deal with what is thrown in my path on that day and so on and so on, day following day, building a life. It is great to know that sometimes reading simple words can give you the courage to face a new day.

Monday, June 02, 1997