Tonight, June 5, 2020, at 6:00 pm, I will be logging out, deactivating and/or deleing Social Media accounts and applications, including Next Door, Facebook and Instagram.

I will also be limiting the reading and watching of News.

During the next five days, I plan to read, research, contemplate, study and meditate, including keeping a gratitude journal and formulating a plan to take action to make a difference in my community and the world.

It is important to me to quiet the noise of social media to evaluate how best to achieve inner peace as well as contribute toward peace in my community, our nation and the world.

The world events of the last several months, events in my personal life and on line courses I am taking are leading me to re-evaluate my purpose, my values and my abilities.

For anyone who would like to discuss my journey, please contact me via email, messenger, text or call.

To my friends, neighbors, family and fellow citizens of the world, I value your life, your thoughts and your struggles. I will continue my quest to understand and empathize with those that are physically different, hold different beliefs and whose circumstances are different than mine.

Years ago, in English Lit class I was required to memorize the following poem. It is something I have held on to thru the years. It continues to speak to me.

Stay safe and be kind.

Love and Peace,

Linda

If

By Rudyard Kipling

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!