How do you measure your achievements?

 A productivity guru on LinkedIn just asked how we plan to measure our achievements in 2024.

Hm. I thought about it. I don't need an app for that. I'll do this:

How about you? Do you have measuring and goal-making plans for 2024? I feel I've just lost that plot, never to return.

I will measure the joy I can wring out of every day

Every sunbeam I can gather.

I will measure the gratitude I remember to have

And the friends I remember to thank

I will count the people I love,

The people I like

The people who choose to help me, to write me, to love me.

The unexamined life is not worth living, but maybe the measurement most important

Is the light we choose to shine

The light we produce with our choices

The praises we sing with our voices.

The measure of joy is not in the actual achievements

But in the counting up of every healthy step.

Every step on the path I take that helps another, is worth it.

Every word I speak that lifts a heart, is worth it.

Every time I rejoice in the health and good feelings of my body, my activity, my meditations, is worth it.

Those "wasted" little words of praise for each individual, 

the hours I spend writing that I'll never publish... they cast light. 

They enable the receiver.

They lift hearts.

Those little words I write are doing their tiny butterfly-wing part to make the world a better place, because each person who receives that seed passes it to another.

We are a relay of light, or we are a relay of dark.

How shall I measure my accomplishments? 

By the light cast 

along the path 

where I have passed.

What else is even worth counting?

The Fool

Fools wear bright colours

and dance erratically

Serious folk

Think Fools don't know where we're going.

In Tarot, they're card zero.

Unlike the grown-up cards

The Fool can not be contained or defined

by a number.

Zero, like Infinity

Is impossible to grasp.

We love it

We're fascinated

We hate it.

In a playing deck, the Joker

Is anything.

Often left out

But when needed, all-powerful.

By being nothing

Indefinable

Hard to Catch

The Fool is Greater than the rest.

Fools are temporarily popular

When the mood is good.

They're the first to burn

When the crowd needs to blame. 

Different.

Indefinable.

Scary.

Do you dare to be the Fool?

If not, if you're afraid –

Take a number. Be anything else.

Be easier to tame.

Be safe.

Do not go out naked, naive, innocent

on a mal-informed adventure.

wise men say that

fools rush in

where angels fear to tread

But indecision is more foolish!

Do Something, 

And if you hate that,

Do Something Else.

That is wisdom

The wisdom of innocence. 

Of rushing in

And carrying on

Go with a pure clear heart

See, adapt

Climb, continue

Believe. Try.

And keep trying.

Don't listen to the numbered folks.

The rules folks

The "you can't" folks.

You can. If you will.

The Fool will.

The Fool always will.

Because the Fool has not heard 

that she can't.

So she will.

Ignorance is bliss is possibility.

The Garden Hose of Love

 

I am a cat

I follow the sunbeams around the house all day. 

I'll follow them outside rather than be in a shadow.

People think I appear and disappear like the mist.

I'm made for adventure.

I am intolerant of noisy people and likely to leave the room when noise starts.

I love to be petted... by the right hand, but don't tolerate the wrong one.

I love to stretch luxuriously and just sit there gazing at people I love.

I love to snuggle and be cozy and warm.

I don't need you for food... I can hunt my own. 

... But I'll gladly share a meal and company if the meal and company are good.

I'm loyal to people who are worthy of it.

I don't follow rules that don't make sense to me.

I can't be caged.

But I'm symbiotically beneficial when the conditions are right.