In any important endeavor, you've got to do your homework, get your facts straight and sharpen your skills. When the ball is over, take off your dancing shoes. As a child, I used to hear my aunt say this, and it puzzled me a good deal, until the day I heard her spell out the lesson more explicitly. My sister had come back from a glamorous weekend full of glitter, exciting parties and stimulating people. But you have to come down.
Life is lived in the valleys.
That's where the farms and gardens and orchards are, and where the plowing and the work are done. That's where you apply the visions you may have glimpsed from the peaks. It's a steadying thought when the time comes, as it always does, to exchange your dancing shoes for your working shoes. I like it for its implication that everyone, in some area of life, has a halo that's worth watching for and acknowledging. I like it for the firm way it shifts the emphasis from self to interest and concern for others.