Ten pages...

Sometimes a little is all you need

It doesn't take much, you know. Sometimes a little is all you need. "There are times when ten pages of some book fall under your eye just at the moment when your very life...depends on your reading those ten pages", Thomas Merton says. When a sequence of sentences get printed that say every thought, every feeling, that you've been trying desperately to. When, Merton says, "You recognize in them immediately the answer to all your most pressing questions." When they break you open. Build you better. They change your direction. They alter your view. 

It doesn't take much, really. Sometimes a little is all you need. "[Y]ou only need ten songs," Nick Caves says, "ten beautiful and breath-taking accidents". That's all it takes to make a record. To make something different. To make everything new. "You have to be patient and alert to the little miracles" he says. You have to believe in little things.

It doesn't take much, it's true. Sometimes a little is all you need. A little time. A little graciousness. Ten breaths, one after another. A little art. A little music. A few small letters stacked into ten good words: You're ok. You're ok. I promise you, you will be.

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