Taking out an older book to read it again was a good idea this time! The book, "Gift From the Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh just seemed to jump off the shelf at me the other afternoon. It was too hot to sit outside to read so I just sat on my office chair with a cold drink and read it once again...
The author, who published the book in 1955, stresses how important it is for a woman to have time alone to find her center. She, like women today, found that women "spill themselves away", giving all they have to give to family, friends and community. So she decided to spend a couple of solitary weeks on an island, SIMPLIFY, and get to the center of who she was at that time.
As I read it, I felt I was there, on the island, connecting with the author's very soul. She says, " I believe that true identity is found in creative activity springing from within.It is found, paradoxically, when one loses oneself. One must lose one's life to find it. Woman can best befriend herself by losing herself in some kind of creative activity of her own. Here she will be able to refind her strength.."
She reminds us that we need to be alone, and quiet, to get to the core of who we are. We need to turn off all media, all distractions, and just "be" and "listen"...We need to "cut out distractions"...She says " One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding; how little one can get along with, not how much..one needs less in the sun. But one needs less anyway, one finds suddenly.."
Please, dear reader, pick up this book and spend an afternoon digesting it. Eventhough it was written years ago, it is valid to tears for us today--now more than then, because of the overwhelming distractions of modern times! Read for yourself! If you don't buy a new book, get an older copy from a used book store.
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