Fess-up Friday: Guilty Pleasures

I'm keeping my own words to a minimum today; the guilty pleasure this week is the cute boy who works in the coffee shop in my building. Ogling him has been much of the reason why I have been low on concentration while I sit working while sipping my morning coffee. Today, though, I did actually manage to keep my eyes from wandering long enough to read this paragraph from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Compensation."

And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, a wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius, for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It  permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances or and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who remained a sunny garden-flower, which no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to the wide neighborhoods of men.