We say that a house is made of bricks, but really the crucial part of construction is less the bricks, and more the mortar that holds it together. You can use all sorts of chunks of material to build up a wall, so long at the mortar between is strong.
What mortar connects you with others so that you can create something bigger than any one of you?
When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
―Hermann Hesse
What have you learned by listening to trees?
One vote doesn’t seem like it can make that much of a difference, but large changes are almost always the result of many small actions.
What small action will you take toward a large change?
It’s hard to forget that we are all connected when you can hear your neighbors through your walls and smell what it is that they are having for dinner. Sometimes we might want to be just a little less connected, but the truth is that however close or distant our neighbors might be, our actions always affect someone.
What is your favorite—and least favorite—way you connect with your neighbors?
Way back in the spring you put this precious hour on layaway, holding it for just this moment. Over the summer it ripened, and now, as the leaves fall and winter is on its way, it is ready for you to enjoy as a pleasure of the late fall.
How will you enjoy your extra hour?
