Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's day! An opportunity to say thank you to my family and friends; I'm just so lucky to have so many great people around me and I hope I return that love and inspiration, and more, more often than not. It's just another reminder day, really. Have passion, love, question, work hard, enjoy, develop, have perspective, be open to change and experience. Love.

This year's February 14th also happens to fall on Chinese New Year.

In the Chinese Zodiac, this is the Year of the Tiger, and the tiger, of course, connotes bravery. The ancient Chinese admired the tiger for its courage and fearlessness, and believed it kept away the three main tragedies of the household: Fire, thieves and ghosts. (VanSun)



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Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.

- Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time imploring one to abandon waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs. (Wiki, of course!)

blah, blah, blah!.. take home message: Thoreau kinda rocks. Get on with your day!

Happy Valentine's Day everybody!