Monday, February 9, 2009

Inspirational women - Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis 1929-1994




If anyone was ever born with style, elegance & taste it was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. It is said that Jackie was incapable of looking messy, whether she was wearing a designer ball gown or was dressed in jeans & a sweater - she always looked "infuriatingly perfect." She was famous for her simplicity which was & is unbelievably difficult to duplicate despite desperate efforts to do so. Her eye for style told her what most of us know but find it so hard to demonstrate: that "less is more."

In the 50's it was said that women either wanted to be Jackie Onassis or Marilyn Monroe - two women who were worlds apart. Jackie with her priveliged upbringing & elite education which included study at the Sorbonne & a Bachelor of Arts in French Literature, & Marilyn with a checkered past that she tried so hard to forget. Personally I can identify with them both & lie somewhere between the two.

Who could forget though the bravery & strength that Jackie showed after her husband was assasinated right by her side - how poised she remained in her pink Chanel suit splattered with her husbands blood. Anyone else, especially Marilyn, would have crumbled to pieces.

MAKING SENSE OF SUFFERING


Good people everywhere are working hard to build a better world & to free it of suffering. Link arms with them & share their goals. Embrace suffering as a natural part of life. Just as shadow & light define each other and one cannot exist without the other, so it is with suffering & joy.
You can't know real joy if you've never known real suffering.

- Jack Wintz (Franciscan priest) -