Kindness makes a difference … and you may not receive anything in return for your kindness – but don’t let that stop you being kind. We all know how good it feels when we experience kindness. And how on a bad day, it can turn things around. Revive our faith in the world. And it’s not always obvious who’s struggling. And if you are, coming up against someone who is being unkind can feel like the last straw. And that straw isn’t always outwardly visible. So it’s just safer for everyone if we all just be kinder.
When the wild things contemplate eating Max, he tells them they can’t eat him because he’s a King. “But you’re so small.” They reply. “Small is good.” Explains Max. “My powers are able to slip right through the cracks.” “But what if the cracks are closed up?” Ask the wild things.
“Then I have a recracker which goes right through that.” “But what if they have some sort of material that recrackers can’t get through?” “Then I have a double recracker that can get through anything in this whole universe and that’s the end. And there’s nothing more powerful than that – ever. Period.”
When Max tells the wild things he can make everything right. They ask, “What about loneliness? Will you keep out all the sadness?” Max says, “I have a sadness shield, that keeps out all the sadness. It’s big enough for all of us.”
( ‘Clunk & Jam Book, 2019. Film, ‘Where The Wild Things Are’, 2009. Original story and book by Maurice Sendak, 1963. Reposted from 2011).
‘All that’s good in me (self-portrait as son Luca)’. Original in colour.
(Reposted for World Dyslexia Awareness Day)
Kicked out of school at 13, Vincent is still barely able to read or write. After 20 years of isolation Vincent was diagnosed with dyslexia. “I can’t tell you the months of the year in order or the alphabet. I’ve tried to learn the times tables all of my life. I’ve accepted that it’s not going to happen and that’s OK. I can use a calculator and I’m getting along quite fine.”
“I was relieved that finally I knew I wasn’t stupid, there was just a processing problem in my brain which I could work with.”
* Article by Sue Smethurst in Weekend Australian Magazine (March 23-24, 2019)
