Now that it’s spring, this month’s session focused on new beginnings, on starting each day afresh. We began by discussing a poem:
Poem by a contemporary South Korean poet, born 1970
In the Morning on a New Day by Joon-tae Moon
A new day has come.
We’re wearing the morning sunlight abask.
The sunlight is soft like music of love.
Mornings are always positive.
Mornings resemble very considerate people
Who nod through things easily.
Yesterday’s melancholy and sorrow
Have passed like clouds.
There’s neither obligation nor need
To dredge up yesterday’s troubles.
Simply, we only need to completely
Forget about yesterday’s things in this morning.
A new day is in front of us.
How fortunate it is!
How grateful it is!
We only need to start again.
In today’s session, we discussed each stanza separately, and you might like to use any one of the stanzas, or the poem as a whole, as the basis for writing.
Here are some additional quotations on this topic that might serve as prompts for writing whatever comes into your mind as you think about them.
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.” – John Newton
One is doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.” — Alain de Botton
Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have. — Epictetus
Never ruin a good day by thinking about a bad yesterday. — Unknown
People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. They prefer suffering that is familiar to the unknown. — Thich Nhat Hanh
Feelings are just visitors. Let them come and go. — Mooji
