Best Of MetaFilter

courage dear heart by distelfliege (cc by)

We've borrowed the quidnunc kid's kind message of love and sharing to all of us to wrap up some touching, interesting, inspiring, educational, fun and/or funny posts to take our minds off certain recent events:

Dear hearts, I should write to you all and each only to say: you are dear, precious, lovely and great hearts. But my words are all worthless, and your honest hearts are greater than my useless words. Persist, I beg you; if we cry together maybe fate will let us halve our tears. But better that you have relief, if the Earth did not make hearts for only weeping.

MysticMCJ on the audition process.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for anyone who can get through an audition process like this and not leave it as a broken shell of a person, let alone actually get accepted. Going to a state university nearly killed of all desire I had to actually play any music... I cannot imagine everything that would lead up to an audition for such a highly regarded orchestra.