Mantras

I read Eat, Pray,Love for my book club last year, and the author talks about how we need to have our own personal mantra to live by. Over the past two days, I've discovered two mantras for myself. The first was in a back issue of Wondertime magazine (a fantastic magazine for parents, possibly for anyone). Areva Martin, a lawyer who cofounded a group to help low-income families with disabled children, says her grandmother and godmother told her "that it was more important that I respected them than liked them." This is going to be a personal mantra for me as a mother. Sadly, I know parents who have never, ever realized this wisdom.

The second mantra I found in The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I am about halfway through the book (it isn't a very long book), and so far I am enjoying it. I'll wait until I finish to say much about what I think of it. However, in the introduction, Coelho writes: "The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times." I love this! It is so true, and I want to be sure to pass this truth along to my children. I even like the way it is translated (Coelho is Brazilian). It is so Hemingway-esque.

So those are a couple of my mantras, words to live by.