Do any of you remember reading Francis Burnett's The secret garden as a child? I received a copy of it in 1971 for Christmas, and it was one of my favorite books. I haven't read it in many years, but I picked it up this morning and just finished it (reading on the treadmill, of course). It is so beautiful and inspiring. Maybe more to me now, than it was as a child, because now I understand the message Burnett was sharing with children and adults. It's a story of transformations. Transforming a spoiled unhappy girl, an even more spoiled invalid boy, and a grief absorbed father. It's a story of Magic, the Magic that comes from fresh air, thinking of others, exercise, eating healthy, and changing how we view and experience the world.
Heres a a quote from near the end I wanted to share, because I believe it has relevance to all of us on the journey we're on:
So long as Mistress Mary's mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to be pleased by or interested in anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly, bored and wretched child. Circumstances, however, were very kind to her, though she was not at all aware of it. They began to push her about for her own good. When her mind gradually filled itself with robins, and moorland cottages crowded with children, with queer crabbed old gardeners and common little Yorkshire maids, with springtime and with secret gardens coming alive day by day, and also with a moor boy and his "creatures," there was no room left for the disagreeable thoughts which affected her liver and her digestion and made her yellow and tired.
I want to be like Mistress Mary, so full of new and interesting people and places and thoughts that I don't have room for fear or distress or discouragement. I don't have time to focus on my failures or slip ups. I want to wake up each day excited to discover what it will bring. I want to live in the Magic of the world.
This journey we're all on does not have to be a sad or stressful one. It can be a journey of discovering how strong and courageous we can be. How strong and courageous we are.
I'm glad each of you are on this journey with me!