Happiness 3 - Oh, The Places We'll Go!

DCL Staff Day

What a pleasure it was for me to be the Keynote Speaker for the Douglas County Librarians' Staff Day.  Their theme was based on Dr. Seuss's "Oh the Places You'll Go," and so we talked about how good stories and good lives intersect on our journey on this earth. 

Wonderful for me to see all these "book people" radiating a passion for literature!  HAPPINESS indeed!

Happiness 2

What is HAPPINESS?

Happiness 1

What is Happiness?

It seems that much of life and literature revolve around this question of Happiness?  What is it?  How do you get it?  How do you keep it? Does it mean different things for different people?  Can you be happy and not know it?  Is being happy the same as being content?  Can you ever be happy and sad at the same time?

No matter our answers to any of these questions, surely it is indeed true, that happiness can and should always be shared.

WONDER 4

EVERYDAY WONDERS

In the story, Charlotte's Web, Mrs. Arable asks Dr. Dorian if he understands how a spider has managed to weave words into a web.

He replies,

"I don't understand it, but for that matter, I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place.    When the words appeared everyone said they were a miracle.  But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle."

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away."  Anon.

What whiff of wonder, what bolt of beauty will take your breath away today?

" 

WONDER 3

WONDER -ANTIDOTE?

Wislawa Szymborska, Pulitzer prize-winning poet, said:

"Poets, if they are genuine must keep repeating, I DON"T KNOW.....Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement"

(and I would say the same is true of children's authors - each story is an effort to grapple with the I DON'T KNOW moments of the world - that is - all we wonder at.)

All rather counter-cultural in this age of GOOGLE and WIKIPEDIA!  But surely we need to show our children that not all things in life can or should be measured - that which is most precious is most often that which is BEYOND measure, for it is MYSTERY.

Indeed Katherine Paterson maintains that fostering a sense of wonder in our children is the antidote to much of our worldly woes.

"Wonder is an antidote against boredom and the disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from sources of strength.

CATKIN - A BOOK FILLED WITH WONDER