Looking for a Rufous

The Secret of Life

I wrote about a scene in the movie “City Slickers”. Use the link and scroll down to “City Slickers”. This is my favorite scene in that movie and is thought-provoking. The quote from James Taylor also makes you think.

https://blazinbernie23.com/tag/city-slickers/

“The secret of life is enjoying time to the fullest.”

James Taylor

Obviously if you follow my blog, you know that I took a sabbatical from this blog for nearly 10 months. I have no excuses to offer except that I was focusing on another writing project. I’m including a link to a post I wrote about “serendipity” in 2015. It should help you understand my mindset about the subject.

https://blazinbernie23.com/2015/11/05/what-is-serendipity/

Serendipity

It’s not complicated, which is the beauty of serendipity, it just happens, no forethought or logging in to a device is necessary. For example, maybe something like this happens. You’re on your front porch having your morning coffee, and you’re standing next to a hummingbird feeder. Still waking up, you hear a sound hardly audible, but it is a sound. It’s the sound of a hummingbird’s wings as the bird flies past your ear to hover over the feeder. You think, that is amazing, I’m so glad I feed these wonderful creatures. OK, one more thing, and I’ll move on. Think of the words from James Taylor that I mentioned (his music is cool too), “The secret of life is the passage of time.” That’s the essence of what I’m saying, life just happens, and we have no control over it, so why try to force it.

Books that I’ve Been Reading

For the rest of this belated blog post, I’ll just mention some books that I’ve read in the past months that might be of interest to you. A lot of what I read is fiction, C. J. Box is one of my favorite authors. He has a new book out, published in March, which I found out about thanks to one of my gym friends. The title is Shadows Reel. I read audiobooks a lot. If you like a good adventure yarn, check out C. J. Box.

Some other books, in the non-fiction category:

Matt Haig, The Comfort Book and Reasons to Stay Alive. When I first started reading his books, I almost didn’t finish the first one. He was talking about people struggling with depression and suicide. But then in later chapters he talked about “reasons to stay alive” and listed 40 reasons, under the subheading “How to Live”. When he wrote about how running could be therapeutic, he had me, since I’m a runner. Bottom line, Haig offers warmth and reassurance, reminding us to slow down and appreciate the beauty and unpredictability of existence.

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk about When I Talk about Running. Again, the running subject caught my attention. The book was published in 2008. Actually, Haig mentions Murakami in one of his books, which is how I found about his works. Murakami is a best-selling author, especially in Japan. I could say a lot more about his books, but you can check him out.

Short and sweet, I’ll end here. I promise I won’t wait as long for my next Rufous post. Thanks for reading.