Uplifting thoughts

The Saturday Night Widows was really quite uplifting.  This was actually an unconventional therapy group for younger widows.  They had all decided, at some point, to go against  the concept that widows were expected to live out their lives in mourning.  It was not a novel but rather a decently written accounting of their thoughts and actions, over the course of a year.  Six of them decided to get together once a month and do something they had never done before, but at the same time they were willing to share their thoughts and feelings.  I almost wanted to cheer them on!

The Pilgrimage was a novel and followed a man who walked the length of England to visit a friend who was dying of cancer.  He was a simple man who believed that as long as he walked, his friend would live.  Most of his thoughts were on his marriage and what had gone wrong with it--which sounds dead boring--but his life review, as it were, made him realize that he wasn't the failure that he had always thought of himself.  I found it inspirational in that he influenced, and was influenced by, the people he met on the walk, and that by changing his behaviour, he influenced his wife to change hers.

To be an inspiration, I think something needs to cause you to consider your own thoughts and behaviour.  Sometimes we don't like what we see, and this may result in change.  Sometimes it makes me look at the why behind my behaviour.  Recently, this is the most frequent result, and can often lead me to think that some of my decisions, although sub-conscious, were right.  An affirmation, if you will.