From The History of Love:

“Having begun to feel, people’s desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how much it sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They struggled to uncover new emotions. It’s possible that this is how art was born. New kinds of joy were forged, along with new kinds of sadness: The eternal disappointment of life as it is; the relief of unexpected repriece; the fear of dying. Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist. There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact.”

The book is the Spanish version, but my feeble translation skills to english below it will hopefully suffice to move you as well.

“En el invierno de 1981, el viajero camina con su mujer por las calles de Praga, cuando ve a un muchacho dibujando los edificios de su alrededor. Le gusta uno de los dibujos y decide comprarlo.

Al tenderle el dinero, se da en cuenta de que el muchacho no lleva guantes, a pesar de la temperatura de cinco grados bajo cero.

–¿Por que no usas guantes?–pregunta.

–Para poder coger el lápiz.

Conversan un poco sobre Praga. El muchacho decide dibujar el rostro de la mujer del viajero, sin cobrar nada. Mientras espera que el dibujo esté listo, el viajero se percata de que algo extraño ha occurido; ha hablado durante casi cinco minutos con el muchacho, sin que ninguno de los dos hablase la lengua del otro.

Habian sido simplemente gestos, sonrisas, expresiones faciales, pero la voluntad de compartir algo hizo que entrasen en el mundo del lenguaje sin palabras.¨

¨In the winter of 1981, a traveler went walking with his wife through the streets of Prague, when he saw boy drawing the buildings of his surroundings. He liked one of the drawings and decided to buy it.

Upon fetching the money, he realized that the boy wasn’t wearing any gloves, as he weighed the fact that the temperature was 5 degrees below zero.

“Why aren’t you wearing any gloves?” he asked.

“So that I have the power to grasp the pencil.”

They chatted a little about Prague. The boy decided to draw the face of the traveler’s wife, without charge.

While the traveler was waiting for the drawing to be ready, he noticed that something strange had occurred; he had talked for almost 5 minutes with the boy, without neither of them speaking in the language of the other.

It had simply been gestures, smiles, facial expressions… but the will of sharing something made it so that a language without words had entered the world.”

Gorgeous and accurate.

Much writing to do. Green Island, Hualien & Taroko, plus my Philippine trip to Boracay still lingers. Await the posts!

ru (4) mu (4) san (1) fen (1)

Here is the description of the quote’s translated meaning from the website..

“These four characters together translate in English to a strong form of “profound” or

“written with a forceful hand”.

But there is much more to the story…
The deep meaning behind this phrase comes from a man named Wan Xizhi who lived in the third century.
He was a great writer and calligrapher whose writing style influenced generations of other writers and calligraphers.

He once wrote words on a piece of wood to be taken to an engraver.
When the engraver began to carve the characters into the wood, he found that Wang Xizhi’s writing had penetrated the wood about 3/8 of an inch. Thus people believed that his words were so powerful, and so profound that it caused the ink from his brush to penetrate the wood deeply.

The phrase literally means:

“penetrated wood three fen”

(fen is an ancient Chinese measurement a little over to 1/8 of an inch or almost 4mm).

Can you guess why I might find this Chinese proverb so appealing?

site: http://www.orientaloutpost.com/ancient_chinese_proverbs_and_philosophy_phrases.php

]]> http://virginiahopes.com/2009/10/29/374/feed/ 3 http://virginiahopes.com/2009/10/14/great-quote-2/ http://virginiahopes.com/2009/10/14/great-quote-2/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:09:51 +0000 Virginia Shaffer http://virginiahopes.com/?p=299 “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – John Eldredge, Wild at Heart

Steve Jobs

Can’t even remember where I found this one. It’s been on a sticky note on my desktop for 3 or 4 weeks now. Not sure why I didn’t put it up sooner but it has great merit between those lines.

“Manifestation is an act of trust. It is the soul pouring itself out into its world, like a fisherman casting a net to gather in the fish he seeks; with each cast properly made, we will bring what we need to us, but first we must hurl ourselves into the depths without knowing just what lies beneath us.”– David Spangler

pow pow