Wise cheese doodles

On a daily basis, I email with my friend Tim. About once a week, depending upon any number of factors, the weather included, I turn to him for guidance about any number of things. More often than not, men and matters of the heart are hot topics. Or hot pockets, should Jim Gaffigan come into play, as he often does.

Today he shared with me the following and I shall attempt to hold it close when the dark thoughts knock around my head as is their wont:

(from a letter by Henry James to his friend Grace Norton)

"Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too muchin these sympathies and tendernesses -- remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own. Don't melt too much into the universe, but be as solid and dense and fixed as you can. We all live together, and those of us who love and know live so most. We help each other -- even unconsciously, each in our own effort, we lighten the effort of others to live. Sorrow comes in great waves.... It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see."

Pretty fucking genius if you ask me. And lest any of my other friends who are not Tim feel that their wisdom has gone unrecognized . . . oh, don't you worry.