I spend a lot of my life worrying about people.  The reason for this is because I really hate hardship of any kind.  I hate the thought that people walk around with heavy hearts.  There is a quote by Shakespeare from Troilus and Cressida which says:

Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark, what dischord follows…

How very profound.  One minute, life is going swimmingly.  The next, it seems to lie in tatters.  We seem to live a lot in the limbo phase, which is where we know that everything is due to come together, but at the moment it seems to lie in pieces.  We know that ultimately it will all come right, but we feel a little nervous about the timing and precision of it all.  It is funny how many everyday occ urrences directly reflect biblical principles.  On a greater scale we live in the limbo phase between Jesus arriving for the first and second time and in the meantime, things can go a bit skew-whiff.

Coming back to the point…  I have these little square notebooks that I carry around with me everywhere.  It has to be a particular type of notebook which can currently be purchased from Dodwell’s Stationers on the Bath Road.  Woe and betide the day that they stop stocking it.  In this notebook I carry most of my life.  Thoughts, telephone messages, doodles, design ideas, pictures out of magazines, fabric swatches, product tags that look nice, anything inspiring etc.

On the front of my last notebook, I had one of my favourite cartoons – no idea who did it.  It says, “I can always make you smile”.  If I had one wish in life, then this would be it.  I wish that I could always make people smile.  Every day.  When things are hard and when things are good.  Life is meant to be a big adventure, not a pit of sadness.  Life is a gift, not a burden.