My 2012 Top Fifty

I tweeted about 400 original thoughts on Twitter in 2012.  Here are the fifty most often retweeted or favorited, in order of popularity.


"Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got."


"What we find in a soulmate is not something wild to tame but something wild to run with."


"Eventually you realize that the reason God didn't always answer your prayers is that He was answering your mom's prayers."


"Be happy, and a reason will come along."


"We never give up wanting things for ourselves, but there comes a day when what we want for ourselves is someone else's happiness."


"As you wait for better days, don't forget to enjoy today, in case they've already started."


"Sometimes we can't find the thing that will make us happy, because we can't let go of the thing that was supposed to."


"Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don't fool."


"I have always needed a place to go to as refuge from the crowd -- and a crowd to go to as refuge from that place."


"Charisma is not so much getting people to like you as getting them to like themselves when they're around you."


"The hardest thing to learn in the game of love is when to fold a winning hand."


"The secret to peace of mind is not to let anyone with an IQ under 50 offend you."


"Sometimes we give up a dream to play a larger role in someone else's dream."


"If God had intended me to make excuses for who I am, He would have given me better excuses." 


"A best friend is someone who never disturbs your solitude but won't let your loneliness have a moment alone."


"How foolish to spend our youth chasing after wealth only to spend our wealth chasing after our youth." 


"Despite the goings-on in Congress, I don't think the U.S. is bordering on madness.  I think Canada and Mexico are."


"You know you have found love when you can't find your way back."


"Occasionally it's good to retrace our footsteps, to remind ourselves who made them."


"Better not to search for who you are until you decide who it is you want to find."


When someone says to me, "I'm sorry if you took offense,"  I say, "Come back when you're sorry you gave it."


"The great thing about rediscovering the person you were is to rediscover the people who still care for that person."


"When I am gone, my love, do not look for me in the places we used to go to together.  Look for me in the places we always planned to go to together." 


"Love is that rare attraction to someone that can survive getting to know them."


"Sometimes it is just the right degree of separation that makes the most lasting bond."


"It is not necessary to be strong in every place if in the place you are vulnerable, you are loved." 


"Sometimes in life you have an appointment with destiny, and sometimes you just have to get destiny to squeeze you in."


"There are days when I'm alone with my thoughts, which is to say, not alone enough."



"I am not the hopeful person I once was, but we try to stay in touch."


"We pretend so that we might be loved, and then complain that we are not loved for who we are." 


"Inner beauty, too, needs occasionally to be told it is beautiful."


"I count myself lucky, having long ago won a lottery paid to me in seven sunrises a week for life." 


"You never have a friend all figured out.  Just when you think you know what makes them tick, they tock."


"Sometimes it's worth getting lost to see who will come looking for us."


"The trouble with always leaving yourself a way out is that you always take it."


"Am I lying to you if I tell you the same lie I tell myself?"


"Sometimes you believe a thing that isn't true because in the world you wish to live in, it would be true."


"I hope for the best, since hoping for less doesn't seem to improve the results any."


"There comes a point in a relationship when you realize you trust someone enough to let them keep their secrets."


"No one who tells you you need to calm down has ever actually seen you when you needed to calm down."


"I like friends who, when you tell them you need a moment alone, know enough not to stray too far." 


"Better to start up a thousand wrong roads than to keep going nowhere because you know the way." 


"Ever wonder what would happen if next time you smiled back?"


"Eventually you realize that you can become the person you want to be by accepting who you are." 


"No matter what you hear said about yourself, do what you would do if you hadn't heard it."


"So often our greatest triumph is a willing surrender."


"Life is not fair, hardest to admit when it's not fair in your favor."


"Occasionally we should trim our relationships, beginning with the ones that have been over the longest." 


"A senseless tragedy remains forever tragic, but it is up to us whether it remains forever senseless." 


"There is a logical explanation for everything, often mistaken for the reason it happened."


~~ Robert Brault

A Few Stray Thoughts

"It is still possible to have friendly discourse in America, as long as you don't bring up any subject."


"Forgiving is easier when you remember that your forgiveness does not confer absolution."


"You spend the first two-thirds of your life asking to be left alone and the last third not having to ask."


"Before you pledge your undying love to someone, make them promise they won't die."


"I am not the hopeful person I once was, but we try to stay in touch."


"Come Judgment Day, the Lord will know what made us sinners, but He might inquire what made us hypocrites."


"There is a public me and a private me, who, if they were separate people, probably wouldn't exchange Christmas cards."


"The more spill-proof cups involved, the happier the toast."


~~ Robert Brault

Newtown

"A senseless tragedy remains forever tragic, but it is up to us whether it remains forever senseless."

~~ Robert Brault

A Newtown Mother's Reverie

A Mother's Reverie


Child lost, do you suppose
That we could ever be apart,
That though you’ve left my yearning bosom,
You could ever leave my heart?

Do you suppose that though the years
Bring what they may of joy and strife,
I’ll e'er forget that once there stirred
Within me your sweet precious life?


Do you suppose that there will come
A morning when I’ll not arise
To live again that day when last
You turned to me your trusting eyes?


Child dear, I know you dwell
Within the Lord’s protective might,
But do you know how brave you were
And how I long to hold you tight?

____________________________________________________


"If there is consolation, it must come from knowing that others have suffered the cruel loss of a child and have recovered to find purpose in their lives.  We exist in a cycle of relentless restoration and renewal, a cycle in which the spring returns and that which seemed forever gone is reborn.  Those who go before us lead the way, and who knows what divine purpose resides in a child taken from us prematurely."

"Child lost, sometimes in dreams

I wander in an endless night,

When, lo, a tiny hand takes mine

And leads me to the morning light."

~~ Robert Brault

No Matter What You Hear Said...

"No matter what you hear said about yourself, do what you would do if you hadn't heard it."


"When two people like the same music and the same movies, they can usually work out differences in politics and religion."


"It helps if you don't see it as traffic but rather as thousands of individuals resolved to press on another day."


"If loving you less would make you happy, do you think your mom wouldn't try?


"For every sorrow in life there is a consolation.  There just aren't any extra consolations."


"It is not granted to the human heart to love less in order to love equally."


"Things happen in everyday life that make you seriously consider living your life just every other day."


"The more that family members talk to each other, the more subjects they know better than to bring up again."


This Married Life:  "The longest Christmas letter always come from someone each of you assumes the other knows."


"It's important to know who you are.  For one thing, it's the holiday cocktail party season, and someone's bound to ask."



~~ Robert Brault