Happiness is an inside job, as I strongly believe.
And yet, one can't be happy 24/7.
Sometimes one has bad days. Or something sad to think about. Or someone to say goodbye to.
[Agatha Christie when she was 35 years old
Copyright Mary Evans Pi/Mary Evans Picture Library]
In those days, it is absolutely important to stay calm and to remember that bad days don't last forever.
And that Scarlett O'Hara is still the best role model in days that one would just love to forget and delete. Like immediately. Like now. Like "oh my God this is just too much for me to deal with".
Tonight I found a beautiful quote by the famous crime novelist and playwright Agatha Christie that can be definitely useful in such days.
As a child and young girl, I was very fascinated by her work and her life and I read almost everything Agatha Christie wrote, including her autobiography and a couple of so-called Mary Westmacott's novels.
As a child and young girl, I was very fascinated by her work and her life and I read almost everything Agatha Christie wrote, including her autobiography and a couple of so-called Mary Westmacott's novels.
[Elegant cover illustration in Black and Purple by Salem Tamer
for Cat Among the Pigeons (1959),
one of the novels starring Hercule Poirot as the main detective]
The way she was able to portray human nature, a broad spectrum of emotions and feelings, interesting drama, and of course misery and meanness was just brilliant, elegant, and razor-sharp, to me.
Her novels and plays are almost never about "who" did it or "how" someone did it. They are about "why" someone did it. And, because of this, they are still interesting today, even if the setting is often somehow old-fashioned and - let's be honest... - a little bit snobbish.
[Marlene Dietrich starring as Christine in
one of the best movie versions of Christie's work:
Witness for the Prosecution (1957) by Billy Wilder,
from Agatha Christie's international stage success]
I still love titles like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, Evil Under the Sun and The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side a lot and therefore I consider the following quote even more interesting.
Enjoy.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, DBE [née Miller, 1890-1976]
And have some chocolate, just in case the day is actually a very terrible one.
If the day is not that terrible, I'd love to hear from you in the comments about your favorite Christie's title.
Tags: Happiness, People, Quotes, Agatha Christie, Literature, Self-care
Tags: Happiness, People, Quotes, Agatha Christie, Literature, Self-care
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