A Mini-Lesson from "The Secret Life of Bees"

One of my favorite parts of summer is sitting down with a good book, and by good I mean something other than a textbook for a change. The first book on the docket this year is The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. I'm currently only about halfway through, but am thoroughly enjoying the story. I wanted to post just a tiny piece of it that really spoke to me tonight and encouraged me to refocus on where my priorities are:

"How come if your favorite color is blue, you painted your house so pink?"

She laughed. "That was May's doing. She was with me the day I went to the paint store to pick out the color. I had a nice tan color in mind, but May latched on to this sample called Caribbean Pink. She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish flamenco. I thought, 'Well, this is the tackiest color I've ever seen, and we'll have half the town talking about us, but if it can lift May's heart like that, I guess she ought to live inside it.'"

"All this time I just figured you liked pink," I said.

She laughed again. "You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the over-all scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart -- now, that matters. The whole problem with people is --"

"They don't know what matters and what doesn't," I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.

"I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."




Sometimes I just love the way a book can speak wisdom into your life. A book can be a gentle message from a friend, or it can hit like a Mack truck, but in the end it hits, and that's what's important. Looking forward to a summer filled with many more lessons like this one. :o)