Start the week on a positive note

Regular readers of my blog will know that Monday is the day when I feel energized and ready for action. I make lists of all the things I've got to do, want to do and should do. Some housework is always necessary after the weekend so on goes the music. The Bangle singing Manic Monday or other housework songs that can be heard above the noise of the vacuum cleaner. Today it is M People singing Search for the hero inside yourself. It is also a good time to reflect on last weeks events and write your diary. In my diary I just write the facts, you never know what to do with it when the year is over, but it's nice to fix things in your memory.

When I went to listen to Simonetta  Agnello Hornby she said that she considers gratitude to be the greatest virtue. I always try and find time last thing at night to think about what I have to be grateful for. Like most of us though I tend to dwell on what I  got wrong. I remember when I was teaching I always tried to end the listen with a compliment for each pupil or student. It wasn't always easy with the naughty ones., I usually said something to the effect of they kept me awake.
we have still got one more week of the merry month of May and nature is a great delight. Here is a perfect  quote for Monday morning from Jerome K. Jerome (1859 - 1927) A writer dear to my heart because his book "Three men in a boat" is set on the beautiful River Thames which I know and love so well. He mentions the town I come from and lived for a while in the area.

 A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forward joyously to meet it. we must press on, whether we will or no, and we shall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind.

Jerome K. Jerome's book Three men in a boat, to say nothing about the dog, is well-known for it's comic timing and dry wit. My favourite passage from it is about the Cistercian monks who lived at Medmenham abbey in the thirteenth century.

The Cistercian monks, whose abbey stood there in the thirteenth century.....
A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot. that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them - the soft singing of the waters, the whisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind - should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven, and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.

So this week's key thoughts for me, are gratitude, go forward joyously, search for the hero inside, and listen out for the beauty around me, I feel exhausted already ....