Springtime and Change

It's springtime in Chicago. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the new quarter began today. And as if that weren't enough, I head to western Mass in a few days to bask in the wonderous, joyous, three-day bonanza that is the CLPP Conference.

Happy happy day.

In honor of all that, here are some words far more eloquent than my own:

"But now that so much is changing, isn't it time for us to change? Couldn't we try to gradually develop and slowly take upon ourselves, little by little, our part in the great task of love? We have been spared all its trouble, and that is why it has slipped in among our distractions, as a piece of real lace which sometimes falls into a child's toy-box and please him and no longer please him, and finally it lies there among the broken and dismembered toys, more wretched than any of them. We have been spoiled by superficial pleasures like all dilettantes, and are looked upon as masters. But what if we despised our successes? What if we started from the very outset to learn the task of love, which has always been done for us? What if we went ahead and became beginners, now that much is changing?"

- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge