Don't love the Heart that hurts you and don't hurt the Heart that loves you.

Don't cry over anyone who won't cry over you.

Good friends are hard to find, harder to leave, and impossible to forget.

Most people walk in and out of your life, but only friend's leave footprints in your heart.

True friendship "never" ends. Friends are forever.

People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.

If we are incapable of finding peace in ourselves, it is pointless to search elsewhere.

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

A change of heart changes everything.

Our greatest glory is not in ever falling, but in rising every time we fall.

You only live once - but if you work it right, once is enough.

One generation plants trees, and the next enjoys the shade.

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

"[Animals] are not bretheren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time."

Henry Beston, Autumn, Ocean, and Birds, The Outermost House, 1928

HUMANS VERSES NATURE

Biological diversity - the range of life forms on earth - is the base of our existence. Myriad creatures, little and big, combine into one massive and intricate eco-system producing oxygen and soil, and recycling water. The world's population remains dependent on a variety of plants and animals for food, medicines, clothes, and shelter as also for cultural and spiritual and intellectual inspiration.

But more than our own dependence, the myriad life on earth - perhaps some 30 million different species -have their own right to life. They are as worthy of respect as humans.

Traditional societies often recognised that we were one strand in an incredibly complicated web of life. Their practices were thus tuned to respect nature. Even agriculture mimicked nature in the diversity of crop and livestock varieties used. Thus Indian farmers developed, through ingenuity and experimentation, 50,000 varieties of rice, and practices like the barnaja, in which several crops, grown together, fulfilled different needs of the village.

Modern agriculture, forestry, and habitat management have ignored our humble place on earth, and, with little understanding of the workings of nature, have attempted to simplify ecosystems to suit our own greedy convenience. Thus single species of trees replace natural mixed stands, and single crop varieties spread over millions of hectares, replace a diverse landscape. But like a mason building a roof by taking material out of the foundation and the walls, this is a suicidal course. As our genetic base narrows, and we become dependent on polluting factories to produce our water and soil and food, we are realising that somewhere we have made a mistake. And so the renewed search for diversity, for co-existence with nature, and for the wisdom that characterised many of our traditions.

Ashish Kothari

Into your arms I breath
within your heart I swim
toward your eyes I'm drawn
around your smile life begins
in your presence I'm healed
beyond words this is felt-
beside you life is warm
reborn unto you I shine.

by lauren6

Painwaves 2the airwaves

Bombscares played
on airwaves frayed
as traffic-flow stalled
our tested patience appalled
by Stansted hinterland
chagrin could understand
the fidgets and nerves
that medical treatment serves
like clouds moving-in
casting chills so foreign
through Borehamwood at 10
unexpectant by then
rain befalls this eastern welcome
though hope shines for their dictum.
London's catch throws me
in medical doses x3
watching paralised 'stability' -
an unhindered crime against mobility
in nothing, I feel nothing
yet...my spirit feels everything.

by lauren6, August 10th, 10:45am