Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.

– Paul Gauguin

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Busy, busy, busy this morning but I wanted to share the quote above from Paul Gauguin. I think it pairs perfectly with the  Gauguin painting above it, one of my favorites, which is titled Vision After the Sermon or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel.

Many of us have noble ideas of how we want to live our lives but all too often we fail to live up to the words that we attach to these aspirations. Virtues such as good, kind, thoughtful and so on. But living up to those words takes, as Gauguin points out, is much more than a matter saying that we are good and kind and thoughtful. It requires the will to put those words into action each new day.

And that struggle is like Jacob Wrestling with his angel throughout the night.

That’s a short interpretation but, like I said, I’ve got things to do. But before I get to it I want to share a few more words from Gauguin that made me laugh this morning:

We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves.

Unfortunately, I know from personal experience that this is true. Maybe that’s what made me laugh.

Have a great day.