It Was The Best of Times ..
Most days, when I wake up, I don’t have time to take a pulse. Life’s too busy.
But this Thanksgiving week is deliberately slow.
When the year gets quieter, I turn to literature both to help me move forward and to allow me to reflect on the past and ideas that have been fermenting throughout the year. For most of this morning, a certain quote has been stuck in my head:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities.
Dickens spent most of his life serializing the plight of the new industrial age. What children, what bourgeoisie, what farm workers were affected by the shift to factories and assembly lines?
This holiday season, we will have every opportunity to reflect on new shifts, seismic shifts, global shifts, in how we work and live.
Let’s make this quiet time, this holiday time, the best of times, by illuminating new solutions, not despairing the demise of the old.
How can we make 2009 the best of times?
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