This week’s card also hails from beautiful China – its sender, Armstrong writes:“About this card. It is divided into 24 solar terms in one year, ever solar term has its specific meaning, This picture is one of the 24 solar terms named Slight Heat.”
24 terms? Now this is news to me – over here, we have the four seasons – winter spring summer autumn – it’s either hot, cold or somewhere in between, but it’s always one of the four seasons. The back of Armstrong’s card states “ Slight Heat: It means the beginning of scorching heat.” This amuses me a little as slight and scorching seem polar opposites! Is slight heat what we’d call “late spring” ? The beautiful dragonfly suggests so.
This has made me think about context and perception … why is it that where one person sees “Spring”, another sees six very different descriptions? Essentially, it’s the same thing that’s being seen right? Now I could get a little deep, and start talking about politics and God here, with this metaphor, but I won’t – I’ll talk about myself, and the way I’ve felt this month. Truth be said, some people I thought better of have disappointed me bitterly, and I’ve spent the good part of this fortnight feeling sorry for myself, but rationally I need to stop. Things will happen regardless of the way I look at them. I can see a closed door, or I can see an open one….
That’s right Mr Kipling, I agree!
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
