Doesn’t this scene from Kumarakom, Lake Resort in Kerala, southern India capture a beautiful moment of calm?

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“Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone.”

Have you ever heard these words before?

Who wrote them?

  1. Bob Dylan
  2. Maya Angelou
  3. The Beatles
  4. Alicia Keys
  5. E. W. Wilcox

They are the opening lines of a poem, Solitude, written by the American author and poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and first published in 1883.

Do you believe in the power of positive thinking?

Like Caterina, the main character in The Inheritance, Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an atypical woman. Born on a farm in Wisconsin in 1850, she rejected social norms and espoused ideas that contradicted prevailing wisdom. Ella Wheeler Wilcox believed in reincarnation and held that positive thinking could reshape one’s life. She died of cancer in 1919.

Is this Caterina’s poem?

Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote the “Winds of Fate” and I believe the poem reflects Caterina’s determination to live a life not defined by gender or restricted by the limits of class.

What do you think? I’d welcome your comments.

The Winds of Fate

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
‘Tis the set of the sails
And not of the gales
Which tells us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through life;
‘Tis the set of a soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

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Is there a poem that reflects your beliefs? I’d welcome your comments.

I hope you enjoy my photographs.

290-foot schooner anchored in the Tyrrhenian Sea

This 290-foot schooner anchored in the calm Tyrrhenian Sea off Sicily’s northern coast was lucky as the volcanic Island of Stromboli behind it erupted six months later.

Iguazu Falls in Argentina

I was in a boat identical to this one at the base of Iguazu Falls in Argentina and experienced first-hand the force of the wind.

Kumarakom Lake Resort in Kerala, southern India

The wind was taking these men to their favorite fishing spot near Kumarakom Lake Resort in Kerala, southern India.