Tag: life

Consciousness · Creativity · Dorothy Perry · Energy · Photography · Practice · Relationship · Song Of Triumph · Vision

Laughter In My Soul

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

This is a reprint of the article “About Life” by Napoleon Hill.

Life, you can’t subdue me because I refuse to take your discipline too seriously.

When you try to hurt me, I laugh — and the laughter knows no pain.

I appreciate your joys wherever I find them;

your sorrows neither frighten nor discourage me,

for there is laughter in my soul.

Temporary defeat does not make me sad.

I simply set music to the words of defeat and turn it into a song.

Your tears are not for me, for I like laughter much better, and because I like it,

I use it as a substitute for grief and sorrow and pain and disappointment.

Life, you are a fickle trickster — don’t deny it.

You slipped the emotion of love into my heart

so that you might use it as a thorn with which to prick my soul —

but I learned to dodge your trap with laughter.

You tried to lure me with the desire for gold,

but I have fooled you by following the trail which leads to knowledge instead.

You induced me to build beautiful friendships —

then converted my friends to enemies so you may harden my heart,

but I sidestepped your figure on this by laughing off your attempts

and selecting new friends in my own way.

You caused men to cheat me at trade so I will become distrustful,

but I won again because I possess one precious asset which no man can steal —

it is the power to think my own thoughts and to be myself.

You threaten me with death, but to me death is nothing worse

than a long peaceful sleep, and sleep is the sweetest of human experiences

— excepting laughter.

You build a fire of hope in my heart, then sprinkle water on the flames,

but I can go you one better by rekindling the fire — and I laugh at you once more.

You have nothing that can lure me away from laughter,

and you are powerless to scare me into submission.

To a life of laughter, then, I raise my cup of cheer!

Laughing all the way, I celebrate your own Songs of Triumph in portrait form. Contact me here.

Creativity · Vision

A Teeny Tiny Love Story

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

A ring. And a pocket knife.

Two things I held dear because of the people who wore them.

Today, though, I had misplaced the knife, and was quietly tearing my house apart looking for it.

Although I was not saying I ‘lost’ it (since I could not bear to think that I might have lost it), I was saying “I’ll find it,’ an affirmation that sets my inner ‘hunter’ in motion.

Looking in a bag of mismatched earrings and old jewelry, I found the school ring from Aurora University my mom wore on her pinkie finger with pride all her life.

Mom went back to school after raising five kids, to become a teacher of other people’s kids. She was literally an ‘old school’ educator – she went from mimeographs to copy machines: no computers at that time. I remember our garage filled with crates of workbooks, paper, art supplies and decorations we would lug into her newly painted classroom each August.

My mom taught third grade in the Aurora Public Schools because she said they still had some cheerfulness and innocence in them. (By the time she retired, that was no longer the case, sad to say.) She was one of those teachers that parents would thank when they saw her in the store, whose kids waved and hugged her when she saw them in public.

Like a lion tamer, she did not show any weakness or fear while she was in the cage.

How great it felt to see someone who sat in the audience watching OUR recitals and performances, sitting on stage in her graduation cap and gown, watching all the people who came to see HER. At that time she was the only older person I had ever seen going to college, and it made a powerful impression on me.

My Dad was a working-class man who carried a pocketknife; and his little silver pocketknife was in his pants pocket or on the dresser his entire life. My dad was a quiet man (you’d be that too with six girls!) but though he was a bit of a loner, he did traditional Dad Things: tending his front lawn, grilling, and watching the Wide World of Sports in his pajamas – especially Pro Bowling (he was an expert bowler.)

He was not as big a book reader as my mom, but when he studied something that interested him, he made notes, studying what he had done and refining the process, drilling down on technique to create something that was distinctly his. This silver pocketknife was his lifelong possession, and still seemed to hold his energy.

So today with Mom’s ring in my hand, I really wanted to find where I had put Dad’s knife. Bags, boxes, drawers, bowls, under beds, in chairs, each time the guess came up empty, “I’ll find it” put new wind in my sails.

And suddenly, I am led to a new direction, a new area, and the box where it was nestled.

Not for me, but for his companion of over 50 years, whose remains live in a small bag of ashes in my home.

Placing the two objects gently together caused a deep rush of feeling and memories for all the things I loved about them both,

and I said, “Hi, Mom and Dad” like I was greeting them in person.

So while some people keep photos of their parents to remember them,

I am keeping the mana of my parents as they were in life – together.

Dorothy Perry is a Chicago portrait photographer specializing in custom family portraits, modern headshots, & personal branding for women and executives.  

Contact her studio for commissioned work here.