The Exhaustion of Insincerity - Part One

Doing my Beyond Beyond lesson today...I had no idea where it would take me.  Kim gave us a photo for us to make into our own...with different processing, a quote, whatever...here's mine:

(Here is the original...)

Looking at the sea (where I don't get to often at all), I remembered a very special book that is a perennial favorite of mine...

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Pulling the book off my one of two large bookcases on each side of my bedroom, I perused it, glancing at underlined passages, among the dog-eared pages caused from multiple readings.  This quote I placed in the photo seemed to resonate...especially after my last two book journeys I've read through.

Anne wrote this book when she got away for a month alone, spending it on Captiva Island, Florida...in a small cottage.

Here is the quote in its context, as she wrote her reflections looking at a channeled welk:

One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding, how little one can get along with, not how much.  Physical shedding to begin with, which then mysteriously spreads into other fields.  Clothes, first.  Of course, one needs less in the sun.  But one needs less anyway, one finds suddenly.  One does not need a closet-full, only a suitcase-full.  And what a relief it is!...One finds one is shedding not only clothes--but vanity.

Next, shelter.  Here I live in a bare sea-shell of a cottage.  No heat, no telephone, no plumbing to speak of, no hot water, a two-burner oil stove, no gadgets to go wrong.  No rugs.  There were some, but I rolled them up the first day; it is easier to sweep the sand off a bare floor.  I have shed my Puritan conscience about absolute tidiness and cleanliness.  Is it possible that, too, is a material burden?

I begin to shed my Martha-like anxiety about many things.  Washable slipcovers, faded and old--I hardly see them; I don't worry about the impression they make on other people.  I am shedding pride.

As little furniture as possible; I shall not need much.  I shall ask into my shell only those friends with whom I can be completely honest.  I find I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships.  What a rest that will be!  The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask.  I have shed my mask.

I must stop here.  Ponder these words and give me your thoughts.  Let's think about this and path this book is taking us.

Until then...be grateful for what you have...and know it is enough for today.