lara simmons

"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." --Old sports adage attributed to sportswriter Grantland Rice I have always believed this old adage. Or wanted to believe that I believed it at least... I am one of those people who tries not to appear competitive, but secretly really likes to win. I put this down to being a first born - we can nearly always beat our younger siblings at almost everything we play for a number of years so we get used to it - but I'm guessing it's also part of being a Capricorn, part of being designated "gifted" in elementary school, part of my familial conditioning, etc., etc. In other words, it's a part of who I am. Competition gets very interesting once you have kids. I noticed right away that at a certain age (around 5 or 6) my older son got really upset whenever he would lose a game, but he was especially upset when he would lose to me. I struggled with this - should I let him win to give hi...

“On this earth we are connected one to another....to another....to another....to another...to another....to another....to another...such that whatever happens to one of happens to all of us.” -- Anna Grossnickle Hines from her book, "Peaceful Pieces" This is a poem called "Dominoes" that my younger son's class read last week on Friday for " Poetry Aloud ." They read it together as a class, one child starting and each child in turn saying "to another," "to another," "to another..." As I listened, the poem came alive for me. The idea of the poem came alive for me. I saw once again that we are all connected, we are all One and that whatever happens for one of us happens to all of us. Did you notice the Freudian slip there? I wrote, "whatever happens for one of us happens to all of us,"  when what I meant to write was, "whatever happens to one of us happens to all of us." But both are equally tr...

"Ask and you SHALL receive." --From Voice of Choices Jan 2006 (paraphrasing Matthew 7:7 from The Bible) For months I have been saying to myself, "I should submit a proposal to teach WRITE YOUR LIFE at East West Books (a local New Age bookstore)." And for months I have done NOTHING about it. Last week I was having my weekly check-in with my sister and I asked for her intuitive hit on this. Was it not happening because it just wasn't meant to be, or was I sabotaging myself because I was scared of it? She said that she was getting the latter and that perhaps I should ask my ego to step aside and let me do this thing I said I wanted to do. The next day I decided this was it, I was going to submit the proposal and go for it. Luckily they make it super-duper easy to do online and within 30 minutes I had sent the proposal off and given it to The Universe to decide what happened next. Twenty-four hours later I got an offer to teach an abbreviated versio...

"Simplicity in its essence demands neither a vow of poverty nor a life of rural homesteading. As an ethic of self-conscious material moderation, it can be practiced in cities and suburbs, townhouses and condominiums. It requires neither a log cabin nor a hair shirt but a deliberate ordering of priorities so as to distinguish between the necessary and superfluous, useful and wasteful, beautiful and vulgar." -- David E. Shi Whew! Finding this quote was like sweet relief. I have been aching for simplicity recently and wondering how to find it. In my head I have a fantasy about a piece of land, far away from everything, and a little house that is off the grid (solar-powered perhaps) where I live with my family, growing our own food, homeschooling the children and just generally "living off the land" as they say. This fantasy only goes so far, however, when I remember that anytime in the past when I have tried to grow my own food, I soon grow weary of all the effo...

There was no quote for this week. The truth is, I just didn't get around to it. My husband was out of town, I had meetings and appointments and Teacher Appreciation Week to attend to and it just didn't happen. So....check back next week when I hope to make it happen. Thanks for reading!