Patience & Fortitude
Hello dear friends!
I’m back and I’m ready for some yoga – I hope that you are too!
The past 10 days have been a whirlwind of fun, love, family, friends, travel, and excitement. After the wedding, my husband and I flew to NYC and saw a few great shows, ate some fine meals, and just generally enjoyed ourselves. It’s something that we hadn’t done in a while and we were happy to get away and take a break. I am so thankful that we could do that.
While in NYC, we visited the New York Public Library (reminder – I love libraries!). It’s a grand old building with beautiful reading rooms, marble staircases, and two large lion statues flanking the front of the building. The lions are stately, projecting a sense of calm. They are seated, watching over pedestrians as they walk by on 5th Avenue. They arrived on the scene in New York when the library was first dedicated in 1911. When they were installed, the lions were named after the two major contributors to the library, Astor and Lenox.
For the next 20 years, Leo Astor and Leo Lenox watched over New Yorkers during the Gilded Age. However, during the Great Depression, Mayor LaGuardia renamed the lions. He wanted them to be an inspiration to New Yorkers as they worked through the economic challenges facing the city and the country. To this day, the lions are known by the names that LaGuardia gave them:
Patience & Fortitude.
Patience - the ability to remain calm and not become annoyed when dealing with problems or with difficult people
Fortitude - strength of mind that enables a person to encounter danger or bear pain or adversity with courage
I took this photo of Fortitude. He looks pretty strong.
Almost one hundred years later, the nation and the world have changed, and yet so much is still the same. Human beings are experiencing fear and anxiety similar to that felt during the Great Depression, but this time it’s on a global level. We’re frightened. The path ahead is uncertain. In the midst of all of that uncertainty, we still have our breath.
One inhale and one exhale.
And just like that, we're closer to the end of the dark tunnel.
Let’s be calm and stately like those lions.
Patience and fortitude, my friends. We’ve got this.
Love,
Nina G