I subscribe to a daily email from Wordsmith.org that introduces a word a day on a rotating weekly theme. It’s a great way to increase your vocabulary a bit, really useful as a writer, and just generally interesting to anyone that loves words (I really do). It gives some of the etymology and an example of usage and the proper pronounciation, all great stuff. However I find that the last few lines are what really keep me coming back for more, and the words seem to be an add-on. At the end of each email, there is a quote. Sometimes it is relevant to the word of the day, sometimes it isn’t.
Today’s is one that resonated so much with me that I just had to share it with you. It’s a quote from David Grayson (Real name Ray Stannard Baker) who was a journalist, author and friend of Woodrow Wilson who died in 1946 at the age of 76. He seems to have been a man that found some peace with himself as he writes :
The sense of wishing to be known only for what one really is is like putting on an old, easy, comfortable garment.
You are no longer afraid of anybody or anything. You say to yourself, ‘Here I am — just so ugly, dull, poor, beautiful, rich, interesting, amusing, ridiculous — take me or leave me.’ And how absolutely beautiful it is to be doing only what lies within your own capabilities and is part of your own nature.
It is like a great burden rolled off a man’s back when he comes to want to appear nothing that he is not, to take out of life only what is truly his own.
It’s a great description of where I want to be at some point in my life. I am not there at the moment but I can at the very least see that I have made some progress along the path in recent months, and that is enough for me for now. That last line is beautiful, here it is again for emphasis :
It is like a great burden rolled off a man’s back when he comes to want to appear nothing that he is not, to take out of life only what is truly his own.
Very thought provoking when one applies that to one’s own existance and relationships with the world and the people in it.
Living Life Positively 
