Changing yourself is easier than changing the world and has the same effect.
From A World Worth Saving, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The man who feeds the jays moved his bench. For eleven years it sat under the oak by the path, and this spring he dragged it twenty feet east, into the sun, and the whole morning changed for him: different light, different noise, a different half of the field. I spent a long time once wanting the wind to drop, and the wind did not drop, and I learned to take off into it instead and arrive at the same branch. Changing yourself is easier than changing the world and has the same effect. I used to think that was a defeat dressed up, the thing you tell yourself when you have lost. Switch asked me what the difference was between the bench moving and the oak moving, and I have not got an answer that satisfies either of us.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- There is much to be undone.
- We have enough oars, if we can find enough rowers.
- Trees never worry about pecking birds or burrowing insects but shake a little when a bulldozer comes near.
- To all the questions pondered looking at the moon, one must add, "What does the moon see looking back?"
- We could not have left the sea if we had not carried the sea in our veins.
- What fool named the wonders of the world when every meadow and wood is filled with magic?