Measuring life with coffee spoons

It is with delight that I come across pieces of writing which make me laugh because of their rightness.  I heard two such this week, one after the other in the space of a few hours, and here they are.

 

The first came during a day’s reading of TS Eliot poems on the BBC.  One of his lines reads:

 

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”.

 

The second was something I heard the art critic, John Berger, saying, when he was talking about writing, and which formed part of the TV obituary on his death a few days ago: 

 

“(Writing) helps me make sense of things.”

 

Both sayings resonate deeply with me.  As people who know me will recognize, I, too, appear to measure out my life with the coffee spoons I use to stir the many espressos I like to drink in the many different coffee houses around London in which I do my thinking and my writing.

 

And writing, which is something I have found I have to do, does indeed “help me make sense of things”.  It helps me make sense not only of my work as acupuncturist, but of my life in general.

 

So it is with great joy that I welcome these two quotations into my collection of sayings that enrich my life.