Quotation of the Week (31/09) - Heidi

Last week I listened to the classic Heidi by Johanna Spyri which I downloaded from Free Classic Audio Books (cf. this post of mine from June).

A disadvantage when you listen to a book is that it is harder to bookmark a good quote. However, Heidi is also available as e-text at Project Gutenberg. So I went there to look up the following passage, which made me smile when I first listened to it, because it seemed to fit right into my own procrastination pattern lately.

Not that I run very quickly in and out of the house these days. And there's definitely no leaping and jumping! Actually, I'm also quite happy to live in town and on flat ground. (While living in town made little Heidi miserable, and homesick for the mountains.) But if you read my post last week about recharging or procrastinating, maybe you get my drift anyway... What I like about this quotation from Heidi is how it conveys that state of mind where you have certain things you ought to do, and that have to be done - and other things that you much prefer doing.

Heidi began her daily work as usual, but she did not get on with it very fast. It was so lovely out of doors today, and every minute something happened to interrupt her in her work. Now it was a bright beam of sun shining cheerfully through the open window, and seeming to say, "Come out, Heidi, come out!" Heidi felt she could not stay indoors, and she ran out in answer to the call. The sunlight lay sparkling on everything around the hut and on all the mountains and far away along the valley, and the grass slope looked so golden and inviting that she was obliged to sit down for a few minutes and look about her. Then she suddenly remembered that her stool was left standing in the middle of the floor and that the table had not been rubbed, and she jumped up and ran inside again. But it was not long before the fir trees began their old song; Heidi felt it in all her limbs, and again the desire to run outside was irresistible, and she was off to play and leap to the tune of the waving branches.

Johanna Spyri, Heidi, Ch XIV (A Visitor)