OWN it!

The book, Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese has been sitting on my bedside table for months. I have longed to find time to do some pleasure reading, but text books have always been the priority. Finally the chance came to me via a presentation needed for my Eng. Lit. class. The whole book has been amazing. During one emotional part of the book, I found myself crying, balling like a baby (and yes, I was at the library. As if people didn't think I was weird enough!) I really like the message that is being shared during this one part and am passing it along to you.

"It was a tale well know to children all over Africa. Abu Kassem, a miserly Baghdad merchant, had held on to his battered much repaired pair of slippers even though they were objects of derision. At last, even he couldn't stomach the sight of them. But his every attempt to get rid of his slippers ended in disaster: when he tossed them out of his window they landed on the head of a pregnant woman who miscarried, and Abu Kassem was thrown in jail; when he dropped them in the canal, the slippers choked off the main drain and caused flooding, and off Abu Kassem went to jail...

One night when Tawfig finished, (retelling this story) another prisoner, a quiet dignified old man, said, 'Abu Kassem might as well build a special room for his slippers. Why try to lose them? He'll never escape.' The old man was right. The slippers in the story mean that everything you see and do and touch, every seed you sow, or don't sow, becomes part of your destiny...

The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny."

Things that make you go hmmm. :)

Peace.