Flexibility with a Bit of Humor

“Blessed are the flexible for they shall not get bent out of shape.”

— Betsy Shirley

(foster mother to more than 20 boys, including Buck Brannaman, quote heard on the documentary Buck)

There is so much movement in my life, and with everyone I’ve talked to lately. It seems that time itself is speeding up. Our ability to hold the paradoxically chaotic and joyful events coming our way is expanding (despite how it feels), and yes, as Betsy Shirley said, we are blessed by the very fact we’re able to be flexible, to not snap in two at every twist and turn.

My sister has a favorite little story about perspective: We might look around us and see other people smoothly floating along with their lives, like so many ducks on a calm pond. What we don’t see is that everyone is paddling like hell underneath the surface…

Betsy’s quote and the duck story have been keeping me afloat and fairly flexible. May they come in handy for you and yours.

Photo: Wildly popular on the Internet, this is the closest I came to finding the photographer’s name—”I’m reblogging this picture from my Peace Corps Mongolia days with a tag since I’ve been seeing it around the web and around tumblr with no source. Enjoy and reblog away! The original source is my Mongolian friend Gangaa. The picture was originally taken in Khentii Aimag.” - from Bayan Jargal on a PeaceCorps Tumblr site