Reading is a passion of mine and my day normally ends with me curled up bed with a book. In the last few years I have been making attempt to stop speed reading and to try and immerse myself in the scene I am reading. This has not always been easy for me to do, but once in a while I will read a line that touches me or makes me think about something in a different way and I will go back and read it again, sometimes more than once. This, in my opinion, is what great writing does to your soul and I am in awe of writers that have the talent to create such feeling with words. Starting today, and every Monday, I will share one of these passages with you.

This weeks’ quote is about change – the changes that just happen versus the changes that we will to happen…

“Ruth thought about change. Nothing is forever; possibly nothing should be forever. But change is a slippery concept. Some change just happens; children grow, become different people, friendships slacken or intensify. Above all, the world turns; the backdrop is a moving screen-an impervious chain of events, something new shouted from the newspapers, the television, different faces, different places. There is no saving, “Hold it! Let’s keep things the way they are” nor would you want to, given the circumstances. Perhaps change is the triumph of hope over expectation. Whatever, it colors the days, the months, the years. We go with its flow.

But then there is willed change. There is that moment of fervent >choice: no more of this car, this house, this job, these people. This husband, possibly.

The thing is to arrive at that moment, thought Ruth. To recognize it, to look it in the eye, to meet it head on. To see it as opportunity, not threat. To say, “Well now, let me consider the options.” To have a strat­egy, several strategies, a whole quiverful of strategies.”
Excerpted fromConsequences, a novel by Penelope Lively

I love the sentence “Perhaps change is the triumph of hope over expectation”. There is such a fine line between hope and expectation but it can significantly impact your outlook on life. These two statements are an example of the difference:

I hope I get that promotion/car/house, etc., or

I expect to get that promotion/car/house, etc.

If you get the promotion it will feel much better if it was a hope rather than an expectation - don’t you think?