Are you the Grumpy or the Cheerful Farmer?
A Simple Secret to a Sweet and Happy Life…
“One secret to a sweet and happy life, is learning to live by the day. It is the long stretches that tire us. We think of life as a hole, running on for us. We can not carry this load until we are three score ten. We can not fight this battle continuously for a half a century. But really, there are no long stretches. Life does not come at us all at one time; it comes only a day at a time. Even tomorrow is never ours until it becomes today, and we have nothing whatever to do with it but to pass to it a fair and good inheritance in today’s work well done, and today’s life well lived.
It is a blessed secret this, living by the day. Any one can carry his burden, however heavy, till nightfall. Any one can do her work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, until the sun goes down. And this is all life ever means to us - just one little day. “Do the days duty, fight the days temptations, and do not weaken or distract yourself by looking forward to things you can not see, and can not understand”. God gives us night, to shut down our little days. We can not see beyond. Short horizons make life easier, and give us one of the blessed secrets of brave holy living.”
-Fr. Lasance, My Prayer Book, p.51.