I start to think that one of the great questions of life is: can you make someone feel better? That’s a really good mission, for each day. I think: did I make a friend laugh or listen to someone or write a word that made a stranger smile? And I do think that can sound so holier than thou, but it’s such a tremendous way to feel that no day is ever wasted.
I was thinking about this because I’ve just spent an hour making the horses feel better. They were a bit hot and bothered and I took them up, one by one, and did our special soothing and anointing and rubbing and scratching. I brushed them till they gleamed and I massaged them and I sang them Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters by Elton John. Damn, I love that song. It turns out that Florence does too, so that goes into the treasure chest of New Things I Know About Her. (That is a very, very precious chest.)
And they were so happy by the end it was a joke and they went into their Place of Peace, their Zen dream, where no wild things are, where they are safe and at ease in themselves and the world is all right and tight. I can watch that for ages, basking in the calm.
I did that. That was my job today and I did it and I feel like I’ve won the Booker Prize or been called up by Stockholm.
Find something - a person, or an animal, or a situation, or yourself - and see if you can make it a little bit better. That is my quest. I love that it’s so ridiculously easy. It’s not splitting the atom or reinventing the wheel. But it ripples out into the universe, and it makes me smile, and that’s all I ask.