It's important to be heroic, ambitious, productive, efficient, creative, and progressive, but these qualities don't necessarily nurture soul. The soul has different concerns, of equal value: downtime for reflection, conversation, and reverie; beauty that is captivating and pleasuring; relatedness to the environs and to people; and any animal’s rhythm of rest and activity.

Disguise our bondage as we will, 'Tis woman, woman, rules us still.

It is not while beauty And youth are thine own And thy cheeks Unprofaned by a tear That the ferver and faith Of a soul can be known To which time will but Make thee more dear No the heart that has truly loved Never forgets But as truly loves On to the close As the sunflower turns On her god when he sets The same look which She'd turned when he rose.

It may help us, in those times of trouble, to remember that love is not only about relationship, it is also an affair of the soul.

From plants that wake when others sleep, from timid jasmine buds that keep their odour to themselves all day, but when the sunlight dies away let the delicious secret out to every breeze that roams about.

The heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to the close.

A genuine odyssey is not about piling up experiences. It is a deeply felt, risky, unpredictable tour of the soul.