Purpose

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony - William Henry Channing

Please see below selected meaning-related change.

August 2018

Please see below selected recent legacy-related change.

See also:

• Halcyon Legacy Headlines

August 2018

• A Scottish company has been given planning permission to create a memorial garden with no visible grave signs or markers. Loved ones deposit physical mementos or time capsules in the ground, locating precise plots using smart phones, according BBC Scotland.

July 2018

Please see below selected recent balance-related change.

See also: Halcyon Balance Headlines

Pre 2018

Halcyon curates the most significant purpose-related content from carefully selected sources. Please contact us if you'd like our help with purpose-related challenges.

Please see below selected recent purpose-related change.

See also: Halcyon Purpose Headlines

July 2018

• Many of us have a strong feeling that there is a job out there that could properly satisfy us, allowing us to develop our potential and talent, argues the School of Life. But we may remain troublingly vague about what exactly this ideal job might be - and what our talents and interests really are. We feel the clock ticking mercilessly, and are always under pressure to earn money and secure status. We tend to suffer this dilemma in private, feel ashamed of doing so, and wonder whether progress can ever be made.

June 2018

Michel de Montaigne's Essais help us better frame and address the fundamental question: "how to live?"

In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau swapped his busy schedule in Concord, Massachusetts, for a wooden hut he built himself near Walden Pond. We had the privilege to visit Walden in July 2012; it exceeded expectations in its tranquility and beauty - and the swim in the pond itself was unforgettable.

See also:

"So come, my friends, be not afraid.
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made;
In love we disappear."

Happy posthumous birthday, Lenny.

You tried, in your way, to be free. Thank you. Now go join that great gig in the sky. So I wrote a year ago, when Lenny left us. However, the legend lives on - listen for example to How the Light Gets In.

'We Love Leonard Cohen' celebrated his 81st Birthday, and then, for his 82nd and final birthday, Leonard gave us a present. "You Want It Darker" is the title track to last album, his 14th studio album in his 49-year recording career. (See also Leonard Cohen Makes it Darker.)

"Leonard Cohen offers the possibility of living with grace, dignity, and integrity, without submitting to illusions, without succumbing to indifference, and without indulging in denial of our own failures and flaws, in a world that is too often corrupt and malevolent" - Allan Showalter

For my late Uncle Denis, who passed away 10 years ago, for his loved ones, and for yours. Now, while we still have the time - i.e. now - we just have to "Be, as a page that aches for a word, which speaks on a theme that is timeless".