Yeah, Yeah, Yeah...

 It has seemed to me for a while now that the least important thing about a person is their opinions. 

Our opinions belong to the outermost layer of the personality- like pimples on the skin.

We get them from our parents, our teachers, our social milieu, from the media we consume. They are accidentals of place and time. They don't arise from the heart. 

They may corrupt the heart, but as often as not we're better than they are. 

So you're a Catholic... a Baptist... a Democrat... a Conservative... a creationist... a vegan.... Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get all that but who are you really?

Are you kind, are you open-hearted? Because that's the stuff that matters....

Waste Land?

 A line that snagged my attention...

People complaining (context unimportant) about having to live in "the Waste Land of suburbia."

Every place has history, every place has character, every place has beauty for those with eyes to see- but if you choose to view it as a Waste Land that's what it will be...

There's a thing that G.K. Chesterton wrote that has become a permanent item of my intellectual baggage. 

It goes something like this (I won't vouch for every syllable being correct because I'm quoting from memory)...

"If men loved London as men loved life London would soon be as fair as Florence..."

The novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill- which I think is the best of Chesterton's longer fictions- is a development of this idea.