Work samples
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DesireDo what we will, sublimate it, escape from it, deny it or accept it, give it full rein—it is always there. Though we know how the religious teachers and others have often said that we should be desireless, cultivate detachment, be free from desire—that is totally absurd, because desire has to be felt to be understood. To destroy desire, we desecrate the joy of life itself. To master desire, shape it, control it, dominate it, suppress it, we may well only succeed in destroying something extraordinarily rare and beautiful.
Jiddu Krishnamurti -
Putty Hill Tree -
Moon Tree at Dusk -
Hope Spring Tree
About joseph
Baltimore City
Joseph graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1983, and has since been based in Baltimore, 3 miles from his birthplace. Joseph has shown his work in many local venues, as well as at Denise Bibro Gallery, the Woodward Gallery, and the Edward Carter Gallery in NYC.
Joseph was awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards in 2007, 2009, and 2012, and is a 2007 Black Spider Award Nominee and his photographs are found in the following collections:
… more
Joseph was awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards in 2007, 2009, and 2012, and is a 2007 Black Spider Award Nominee and his photographs are found in the following collections:
… more
Lately What Preys On My Mind
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take up some god damn space....we live in a society
of “can’ts”
and “shouldn’ts”
and “sorrys”
rather than
“fuck yeses”
and “hell yas”
and “fuck NOs”
all I have to say to women
is this one simple thing
take up some
god
damn
space
you’re amazing
perfection
the Rolls Royce of the world
women everywhere
you’re worth it
without Maybelline telling you so
you deserve to linger when you’re ordering coffee
you’re allowed to take a breath before you make everyone’s day
take an hour to decide what you want to wear
take a lifetime to choose a mate
you’re allowed to stutter in yoga class
if it’s pushing you to be your best
you’re allowed to speak your truth
every single time
please
speak your truth
even if your voice shakes
you’re allowed to take space
take up some space for your heart
take up some space for your mind
take up some damn space for yourself
you’re allowed to be seen
and be heard
in fact you must
we need you
we need you
did I say it enough?
we need you
you don’t need to give
and give
and then give
without filling yourself up
we need you
as a full being
because
you
women of the world
you hold the key
so please
show our daughters
and our sons
women are not nice
just to be nice
they’re kind
in the heart
and a fucking giant
in the soul
they take up space
in this world
space for them
space they deserve
that says they’re worthy
they light candles
on their own
just to sit in a cozy space
they run baths
for themselves
wear underwear
with lace
set up paints
and just paint
they eat steak
they didn’t make
they drink champagne
not in vain
but because they’re worth
every
last
bubble
women
of the world
you’re worth it
think throughout the day
am i playing small?
or am I standing tall?
it’s amazing
when one woman stands tall
the rest feel the call
so please
women of the world
for me
this it is
so that I can take up mine
take up
some
god
damn
space.
Tamara McLellan -
However little we may be attached to the world......However little we may be attached to the world, we never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of mankind, the misanthrope flies from it, resolves to become a hermit, and buries himself in the cavern of some gloomy rock. While hate inflames his bosom, possibly he may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which he bore with him to his solitude, think you that content becomes his companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, he feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and he pants to return to that world which he has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, he views without emotion the glory of the setting sun. Slowly he returns to his cell at evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former. Man was born for society.
Matthew Gregory Lewis
The Monk -
No one can know in advance how and where the night will comeWe don't need to retire to a cloister or the desert for years on end to experience a true dark night; we don't even have to be pursuing any particular "spiritual" path. Raising a challenging child, or caring for a failing parent for years on end, is at least as purgative as donning robes and shaving one's head; to endure a mediocre work situation for the sake of the paycheck demands at least as much in the way of daily surrender as do years of pristine silence in a monastery. No one can know in advance how and where the night will come, and what form God's darkness will take.
Tim Farrington
A Hell of Mercy -
Piety is a discipline of the will through respectPiety is a discipline of the will through respect. It admits the right to exist of things larger than the ego, of things different from the ego.
Richard M. Weaver
Ideas Have Consequences -
they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgustingI think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody.
They may be teaching that still.
Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’
I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five -
I remember wondering, to be always together, yet forever apart?Dusk is such an illusion. The sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are, there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel, I remember wondering, to be always together, yet forever apart?
Nicholas Sparks -
there is no Leader; there is no Guru; there is no Master, no SaviorHere is a fundamental question: is life simply a torture?
It is, as it is; and man has lived in this torture for centuries, from ancient times to present day, in agony, in despair, in sorrow; and he never seems to find a way out of it.
Therefore he invents gods, churches, all the rituals, and all that nonsense, or he escapes in other ways.
What we are trying to do, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind. Not simply to accept things as they are, nor revolt against them. We must go deep into this world, examine it, give to it all our heart and our mind, with everything that we have, to find out a way of living differently.
That depends on each of us, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour.
You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand that is to begin to transform what is.
Jiddu Krishnamurt -
only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in itWe have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world - to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity - our own capacity for life - that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the creation itself is stifled.
We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.
Wendell Berry
The Art of the Commonplace:
The Agrarian Essays -
Maybe there were things I saw as ugly that other people thought were beautifulI daydreamed a lot about the sycamore tree, too, which at first I thought was because I was feeling melancholy. But then I remembered how my mother had called the sycamore a testimony to endurance. It had survived being damaged as a sapling. It had grown. Other people thought it was ugly, but I never had.
Maybe it was all in how you looked at it. Maybe there were things I saw as ugly that other people thought were beautiful.
Wendelin Van Draanen -
face the challenge of changeOne of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lately What Preys On My Mind
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I'm feeling so yellowI'm feeling so yellow. Because I didn't get to choose my parents, and at some point I realized that just maybe my parents aren't able to parent perfectly, but we exist, and the only choice I've got in the whole situation is whether I'm gonna love them anyway. It's as simple and messy and complicated as that.
Megan Jacobson
Yellow -
the power of the world always works in circlesYou may have noticed that everything the Native American does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round….. The Sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours…. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.
Black Elk
Oglala Sioux Holy Man -
Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousnessThere is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a window is thrown open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined to wilt in the sun.”
Sherwood Anderson
Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life -
places were much more reliable than human beingsI told the students that they were at an age when they might begin to choose the places that would sustain them the rest of their lives, that places were much more reliable than human beings, and often much longer-lasting, and I asked each of them where they felt at home. They answered, each of them, down the rows, for an hour, the immigrants who had never stayed anywhere long or left a familiar world behind, the teenagers who'd left the home they'd spent their whole lives in for the first time, the ones who loved or missed familiar landscapes and the ones who had not yet noticed them.
I found books and places before I found friends and mentors, and they gave me a lot, if not quite what a human being would. As a child, I spun outward in trouble, for in that inside-out world [of my family], everywhere but home was safe. Happily, the oaks were there, the hills, the creeks, the groves, the birds, the old dairy and horse ranches, the rock outcroppings, the open space inviting me to leap out of the personal into the embrace of the nonhuman world.
Rebecca Solnit
The Faraway Nearby -
Pooh, promise you won't forget about me
"'Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred.”
Pooh thought for a little.
“How old shall I be then?'
“Ninety-nine.”
Pooh nodded.
'I promise'"
A.A. Milne -
my greatest fears have been realizedThousands of people who have had their lives dramatically altered by sexual violence have reached out to share their own experiences with me and have thanked me for coming forward…At the same time, my greatest fears have been realized—and the reality has been far worse than what I expected. My family and I have been the target of constant harassment and death threats. I have been called the most vile and hateful names imaginable. These messages, while far fewer than the expressions of support, have been terrifying to receive and have rocked me to my core.
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford -
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusionWhen we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
Henri Nouwen
Out of Solitude: Three Meditations -
shifting the blame from the power elite to those they oppress
Those who fail to exhibit positive attitudes, no matter the external reality, are seen as maladjusted and in need of assistance. Their attitudes need correction. Once we adopt an upbeat vision of reality, positive things will happen. This belief encourages us to flee from reality when reality does not elicit positive feelings. These specialists in "happiness" have formulated something they call the "Law of Attraction." It argues that we attract those things in life, whether it is money, relationships or employment, which we focus on. Suddenly, abused and battered wives or children, the unemployed, the depressed and mentally ill, the illiterate, the lonely, those grieving for lost loved ones, those crushed by poverty, the terminally ill, those fighting with addictions, those suffering from trauma, those trapped in menial and poorly paid jobs, those whose homes are in foreclosure or who are filing for bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills, are to blame for their negativity. The ideology justifies the cruelty of unfettered capitalism, shifting the blame from the power elite to those they oppress. And many of us have internalized this pernicious message, which in times of difficulty leads to personal despair, passivity and disillusionment.
Chris Hedges -
one side of itYou figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is in the very nature of evil to be secret.
Gregory Maguire
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West -
in defiance of all that is bad around us
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Howard Zinn
Lately What Preys On My Mind
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memories are bulletsMemories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces.
Richard Kadrey
Kill the Dead -
DissimulationDissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation.
Susan Sontag
Under the Sign of Saturn -
Even the clouds get in on the the quirkyI do love Northern California. You can order your omelet with avacado and tofu, and they won’t call the police.
Even the clouds get in on the the quirky -
casualties of the primitive rules of competitionThere are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state keeps them just barely alive. And that’s all.
Michael Palin Diaries
1969-1979:
The Python Years -
the shelter of this standing stoneTraveling west from Petaluma to Point Reyes, I came across this lone oak tree that had probably sprouted from the shelter of this standing stone. I could well imagine this fellow enjoying significant protection from the powerful westerly winds coming off of the Pacific, at least until it reached some level of maturity. Wouldn’t it be nice if everybody experienced this kind of security during their most vulnerable years. -
the deep interconnectedness I longed forMy glorification of independence and individualism made me and easy target for the myth of meritocracy, and overshadowed what in my heart I knew to be true: the deep interconnectedness I longed for with family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers is core to human survival. Interdependence is our true lifeblood.
Debby Irving,
Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race -
addictive poisons and corrupting entertainmentsThe darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks.
This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines?
Kurt Vonnegut
Bluebeard -
When we don’t use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggleAs it turns out, it’s not merely benign or “too bad” if we don’t use the gifts that we’ve been given; we pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being. When we don’t use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle. We feel disconnected and weighed down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame, disappointment, fear, and even grief.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection -
a country where everyone lives in fearOnce a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950
Harry S. Truman -
just believing that I belong where I am and deserve to take up spaceIt’s a struggle for me to remain open, and not shut down because I’m feeling defensive or scared or maybe my ego is getting in the way. And the other side of that is just believing that I belong where I am and deserve to take up space. I fight constantly between those two things, between not apologizing for what I want and staying vulnerable and creatively supple and not thinking I know better than everyone else.
Amy Poehler
Lately What Preys On My Mind
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I must keep in good health and not die“There is no sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?"
"They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer.
"And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"
"A pit full of fire."
"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"
"No, sir."
"What must you do to avoid it?"
I deliberated a moment....
“I must keep in good health and not die.”
Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre -
commonwealthA proper community is in practice a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of ALL of its members - among them the allowance to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy.
Wendell Berry
Racism and the Economy
The Agrarian Essays -
Night, beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive.Night, beloved. Night,
when words fade
and things come alive.
When the destructive analysis
of day is done,
and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles
his fragmentary self
and grows
with the calm
of a tree.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry -
memento mori“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s or thing’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”
Susan Sontag
So true. When I came back the next morning this behemoth driftwood was nowhere in sight. -
indoctrinationIdeally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we have manifested thus far. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. Even a cursory glance at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.
Doris Lessing
The Golden Notebook -
May you recognizeMay you recognize in your life, the presence, power and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone,
That your soul in its brightness and belonging
connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique,
that you have a special destiny here,
That behind the facade of your life
there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening.
May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride,
and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.
John O’Donohue
Anam Cara -
Where are the cartographers of human purpose?
But where are the alternatives? Where are the dreams that motivate and inspire? We long for realistic maps of a world we can be proud to give to our children. Where are the cartographers of human purpose? Where are the visions of hopeful futures of technology as a tool for human betterment and not a gun on hair trigger pointed at our heads?
Carl Sagan
Pale Blue Dot -
wrong for us in just the right wayWe’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if we’ve been through enough relationships, we begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because we ourselves are wrong in some way, and we seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into our own wrongness. And it isn’t until we finally run up against our deepest demons, our unsolvable problems—the ones that make us truly who we are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do we finally know what we’re looking for. We’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: it's got to be the right wrong person—someone we lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.”
Eventually we find that special person who is wrong for us in just the right way.
Andrew Boyd
The Agony of Being Connected
to Everything in the Universe -
We are those scars that we hideWe are the stories and incidents that we never tell anyone.
We are the thoughts that we have standing under the shower.
We are those memories that won't let us sleep at night peacefully.
We are those words that we will never say to another soul.
We are those scars that we hide,
from everyone.
We are those little secrets.
We are everything that we hide.
Akshay Vasu -
when no destination comes to mindto be a cloud
assuming any shape
and in turn, every form
for now, this one
and now that one
but not for long
now another
and still another
endlessly shifting
edgeless and drifting
aimlessly
shamelessly
when no destination comes to mind
Lately What Preys On My Mind
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Engraven TreeI found this nature-made pictograph embellished from a tiny crack on an old gravestone. I’m guessing a tree lover was laid to rest here a very long time ago. -
God didn’t create fencesGod didn’t create fences for us or boundaries to contain our nationalities. Man did. God didn’t draw up religious barriers to separate us from each other. Man did. And on top of that, no father would like to see his children fighting or killing each other. The Creator favors the man who spreads love over the man who spreads hate. A religious title does not make anyone more superior over another. If a kind man stands by his conscience and exhibits truth in his words and actions, he will stand by God regardless of his faith. If mankind wants to evolve, we must learn from our past mistakes. If not, our technology will evolve without us.
Suzy Kassem
Rise Up and Salute the Sun -
yearning for and resisting joy
I had watched the sun blaze and in the blink of an eye slip away; the happiness I felt in that moment was a heartbeat from tipping to sadness at the knowledge that I couldn't hold it forever. My old familiar push-pull, my trademark yearning for and resisting joy.
Sarah Combs
Breakfast Served Anytime -
this body was not mineThe day my mother died I wrote in my journal, "A serious misfortune of my life has arrived." I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.
I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet... wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as "my" feet were actually "our" feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.
From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.
Thich Nhat Hanh
No Death, No Fear -
because no one owns anyone
No one loses anyone,
because no one owns anyone.
That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.
Paulo Coelho
Eleven Minutes -
caught in an inescapable network of mutualityAll this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.
Martin Luther King Jr. -
freedom involves attentionThe really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
David Foster Wallace
This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life -
intermixingThrough love, tribes have been intermixing colors to reveal a new rainbow world.
And as more time passes, this racial and cultural blending will make it harder for humans to side with one race, nation or religion over another.
Suzy Kassem
Rise Up and Salute the Sun -
Spring would soon come again
Meanwhile, Spring would soon come again, and with it the outpourings of Nature. The hills will once again splash with wild flowers; the grass and trees will become an altogether new and richer shade of green; and the air will once again become scented with fresh and surprising smells -- of jasmine, honeysuckle, and lavender.
Dalai Lama XIV,
Freedom in Exile:
Autobiography of the Dalai Lama -
I want to be and not be ashamed of simply being
I want to see the world without explaining away its mystery by calling things wicked, righteous, sinful, and good. I want to erase in myself the easy explanations, the always mendacious explanations about why things happen the way they do, and in this way, come to know the mystery of being–-not by any approximation in thought, but by actually being. I want to be and not be ashamed of simply being.
Therese Doucet
A Lost Argument
Lately What Preys On My Mind
-
The American Dream betrayed even those who achieved itThe American Dream betrayed even those who achieved it, lonely in their overtime careers and their McMansions, narcotized to the ongoing ruination of nature and culture but aching because of it, endlessly consuming and accumulating to quell the insistent voice: “I wasn’t put here on Earth to sell a product.” “I wasn’t put here on Earth to increase market share.” “I wasn’t put here on Earth to make numbers grow.” We protest not only at our exclusion from the American Dream; we protest at its bleakness. If it cannot include everyone on Earth, every ecosystem and bioregion, every people and culture in its richness; if the wealth of one must be the debt of another; if it entails sweatshops and underclasses and fracking and all the rest of the ugliness our system has created, then we want none of it.
No one deserves to live in a world built upon the degradation of human beings, forests, waters, and the rest of our living planet. Speaking to our brethren on Wall Street: No one deserves to spend their lives playing with numbers while the world burns.
Charles Eisenstein -
It’s you I like
There’s a neighborhood song that is meant for the child in each of us, and I’d like to give you the words of that song right now. “It’s you I like, it’s not the things you wear. It’s not the way you do your hair, but it’s you I like. The way you are right now, the way down deep inside you. Not the things that hide you. Not your caps and gowns, they’re just beside you. But it’s you I like. Every part of you. Your skin, your eyes, your feelings. Whether old or new, I hope that you remember, even when you're feeling blue, that it’s you I like. It’s you, yourself, it’s you. It’s you I like.
Fred Rogers
2002 Commencement Speech
Dartmouth College -
The American Dream betrayed even those who achieved itThe American Dream betrayed even those who achieved it, lonely in their overtime careers and their McMansions, narcotized to the ongoing ruination of nature and culture but aching because of it, endlessly consuming and accumulating to quell the insistent voice: “I wasn’t put here on Earth to sell a product.” “I wasn’t put here on Earth to increase market share.” “I wasn’t put here on Earth to make numbers grow.”
We protest not only at our exclusion from the American Dream; we protest at its bleakness. If it cannot include everyone on Earth, every ecosystem and bioregion, every people and culture in its richness; if the wealth of one must be the debt of another; if it entails sweatshops and underclasses and fracking and all the rest of the ugliness our system has created, then we want none of it.
No one deserves to live in a world built upon the degradation of human beings, forests, waters, and the rest of our living planet. Speaking to our brethren on Wall Street: No one deserves to spend their lives playing with numbers while the world burns.
Charles Eisenstein -
The state of interbeingThe state of interbeing is a vulnerable state. It is the vulnerability of the naive altruist, of the trusting lover, of the unguarded sharer. To enter it, one must leave behind the seeming shelter of a control-based life, protected by walls of cynicism, judgment, and blame.
Charles Eisenstein
The More Beautiful World
Our Hearts Know Is Possible -
we are not so different from each other
If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique.
Oliver Sacks
The Man Who Mistook His Wife
for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales -
a beautiful world waits for us patiently
In our future,
a beautiful world waits for us patiently.
In it, a person in the throes of emotional chaos is met with unconditional support,
listened to with patient ears, seen as the sole expert of her own life.
She is given sanctuary, and open arms,
but only if she wants them.
Laura Delano
March 31, 2014 -
Oh, no, no, you've got that all wrong. You're not required to respect elders.Oh, no, no, you've got that all wrong. You're not required to respect elders. After all, most people are idiots, regardless of age. In tribal cultures, we just make sure that elders remain an active part of the culture, even if they're idiots. Especially if they're idiots. You can't just abandon your old people, even if they have nothing intelligent to say. Even if they're crazy.
Sherman Alexie
The Toughest Indian in the World -
the way to be happy is to help others to be so
Reason, Observation and Experience — the Holy Trinity of Science — have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to help others to be so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, Nature shall be demonstrated, we shall trust there will be time enough to kneel.
Until then, let us stand erect in this faith.
Robert G. Ingersoll
On the Gods and Other Essays -
It is quite normal to fear what one most desires
It is quite normal to fear what one most desires. We desire to transcend the Story of the World that has come to enslave us, that indeed is killing the planet. We fear what the end of that story will bring: the demise of much that is familiar.
Fear it or not, it is happening already.
Charles Eisenstein
The More Beautiful World
Our Hearts Know Is Possible -
MindfulnessThere is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just be. Just being in the moment in this place is the deepest practice of meditation. Most people cannot believe that just walking as though you have nowhere to go is enough. They think that striving and competing are normal and necessary. Try practicing aimlessness for just five minutes, and you will see how happy you are during those five minutes.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The Miracle of Mindfulness
Lately What Preys On My Mind
-
The life of Man is a long march through the nightThe life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish form our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair.
Bertrand Russell -
It feels like the county fair has inhabited my mind
But my brain winds and wends. Back and forth. Up and down. It feels like the county fair has inhabited my mind-- complete with sketchy rides, carnies, and sugar-amped kids crying over lost balloons. So loud and disorienting. I want it to pack up and move on to the next town. I want my mind to be an open grassy field again with crickets and dandelions.
Laura Munson
This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness -
gaze into the internal mirrorFrom time to time, we all must go into a landscape—be it inner or outer landscape—where there are no hiding places. Allowing the stark awe and silence to aid us in both communing and confronting the depth of ourselves.
We fear emptiness because we know that within those places of nothingness we will come face-to-face with who we are and gaze into the internal mirror. But what is the alternative? Shall we go our entire life without hearing our own voice . . . without ever having met who we really are when isolated from all else?
L.M. Browning, Seasons of Contemplation: A Book of Midnight Meditations -
I would not have any one adopt my mode of livingI would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden -
Honesty is not the revealingHonesty is not the revealing of some foundational truth that gives us power over life or another or even the self, but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing and how astonished we are by the generous measure of grief that is conferred upon even the most average life.
David Whyte
Honesty -
that completes itself simply by being itself....The rich flow of creativity, innovation, and almost musical complexity we are looking for in a fulfilled work life cannot be reached through trying or working harder. The medium for the soul, it seems, must be the message. The river down which we raft is made up of the same substance as the great sea of our destination. It is an ever-moving, firsthand creative engagement with life and with others that completes itself simply by being itself......
David Whyte
The Heart Aroused:
Poetry and the Preservation
of the Soul -
keep my glass cleanThere might be no unrequited love, because every relationship is a room full of mirrors. What I find and love in others is perhaps merely the reflection of my very best intentions, and what I loathe is the embarrassing illumination of my worst traits and fears. From those who attend almost entirely to their surfaces, I find comfort and familiarity when I too, feel the need to self-obscure. But the people with the clearest and most transparent glass, are always the ones who evoke the most powerful and fascinating emotions in me. So my take-away-today is to keep my glass clean, because that’s the person that wants to be seen. -
You are all just like thatWhat I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.
Alan W. Watts -
They are wiser than we are
Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
Hermann Hesse
Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte -
We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about GodIn a short time a group of commissioners arrived to begin organization of a new Indian agency in the valley. One of them mentioned the advantages of schools for Chief Joseph’s people. Joseph replied that the Nez Percés did not want the white man’s schools. “Why do you not want schools?” the commissioner asked. “They will teach us to have churches,” Joseph answered. “Do you not want churches?” “No, we do not want churches.” “Why do you not want churches?” “They will teach us to quarrel about God,” Joseph said. “We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that.
Dee Brown
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Lately What Preys On My Mind
-
mature in one realm, childish in another
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
Anaïs Nin -
The death of a dreamThe death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form,
with reinvigorated substance,
a fresh flow of ideas,
and splendidly revitalized color.
In short, the power of a certain kind of dream
is such that death need not indicate finality at all
but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward.
Aberjhani
The River of Winged Dreams -
The soul doesn't know a thing about deadlinesSometimes the people with the greatest potential often take the longest to find their path because their sensitivity is a double edged sword- it lives at the heart of their brilliance, but it also makes them more susceptible to life's pains. Good thing we aren't being penalized for handing in our purpose late. The soul doesn't know a thing about deadlines.
Jeff Brown
Love It Forward -
the assurance that dawn comes after nightThose who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
Rachel Carson
Silent Spring -
born with a piece of night insideYou see, some people are born with a piece of night inside, and that hollow place can never be filled - not with all the good food or sunshine in the world. That emptiness cannot be banished, and so some days we wake with the feeling of the wind blowing through, and we must simply endure it...
Leigh Bardugo
The Language of Thorns:
Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic -
Only the servile are punctual
The superior thing, in this as in other departments of life, was to be late. Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call time which is so necessary to ensure the respect of others and oneself. Only the servile are punctual.
Rose Macaulay
Mystery at Geneva -
Sometimes our hearts scream yes while our heads say run; and only one can be obeyedWe deny more than we confess. We hide more than we reveal. We assume because it makes us feel exposed if we have to ask. It's easier to say "I feel nothing" than to admit "I feel something." It takes no courage to say, "I hate you" but it takes a great deal more than moxie to declare its opposite. Masks are elaborate and everyone has a few. It takes a while to get to know people. This doesn't make them special, it makes them like everyone else. Sometimes our hearts scream yes while our heads say run; and only one can be obeyed.
Donna Lynn Hope -
Rum Tum Tugger
The Rum Tum Tugger
is a Curious Cat
If you offer him pheasant
he would rather have grouse.
If you put him in a house
he would much prefer a flat,
If you put him in a flat
then he'd rather have a house.
If you set him on a mouse
then he only wants a rat,
If you set him on a rat
then he'd rather chase a mouse.
Yes the Rum Tum Tugger
is a Curious Cat -
And there isn't any call
for me to shout it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there's no doing anything
about it!
T.S. Eliot
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats -
There is no envy, jealousy, or hatred between the different colors of the rainbowThere is no envy, jealousy, or hatred between the different colors of the rainbow. And no fear either. Because each one exists to make the others more beautiful.
Aberjhani
Journey through the Power
of the Rainbow -
So let the darkness shape youSo let the darkness shape you,
let it reform you,
let it cradle you
and birth you
into a new life;
a new way of being.
Let the spark flame again,
in the darkness
is where you will find it.
L.J. Vanier
Ether: Into the Nemesis
Lately What Preys On My Mind
-
Winter of DiscontentBecause money is convertible into all other things, it infects them with the same feature, turning them into commodities—objects that, as long as they meet certain criteria, are seen as identical. All that matters is how many or how much. Money, says Seaford, 'promotes a sense of homogeneity among things in general.' All things are equal, because they can be sold for money, which can in turn be used to buy any other thing. In the commodity world, things are equal to the money that can replace them. Their primary attribute is their 'value'—an abstraction. I feel a distancing, a letdown, in the phrase, 'You can always buy another one.' Can you see how this promotes an antimaterialism, a detachment from the physical world in which each person, place, and thing is special, unique? No wonder Greek philosophers of this era [when modern money originated] began elevating the abstract over the real, culminating in Plato's invention of a world of perfect forms more real than the world of the senses. No wonder to this day we treat the physical world so cavalierly. No wonder, after two thousand years' immersion in the mentality of money, we have become so used to the replaceability of all things that we behave as if we could, if we wrecked the planet, simply buy a new one.
Charles Eisenstein
The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible -
wrapped in a cloud of inevitability
The most dangerous ideas are not those that challenge the status quo. The most dangerous ideas are the ones so embedded in the status quo, so wrapped in a cloud of inevitability, that we forget they are ideas at all.
Jacob M. Appel
Phoning Home -
All the places I've beenAll the places I've been
make it hard to begin
to enjoy life again on the inside,
but I mean to.
Take a walk ‘round the block
and be glad that I've got
me some time to be in
from the outside,
and inside with you.
I'm sitting on the corner feeling glad.
Got no money coming in
but I can't be sad.
That was the best cup of coffee
I ever had.
And I won't worry about a thing
because we've got it made,
here on the inside,
outside so far away.
And we'll laugh and we'll sing
get someone to bring,
our friends here for tea
in the evening --
And Jeffrey makes three.
Take a walk in the park,
does the wind in the dark
sound like music to you?
Well I'm thinking it does to me.
Can you cook, can you sew --
well, I don't want to know.
That is not what you need on the inside,
to make the time go.
Counting lambs, counting sheep
we will fall into sleep
and we awake to a new day of living
and loving you so.
Inside
Ian Anderson -
Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude
Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet
-
Oh I know today is Windsday
Oh the wind is lashing lustily
And the trees are thrashing thrustily
And the leaves are rustling gustily
So it's rather safe to say
That it seems that it may turn out to be
It feels that it will undoubtedly
It looks like a rather blustery day, today
It sounds that it may turn out to be
Feels that it will undoubtedly
Looks like a rather blustery day
Oh I know today is Windsday
And this is how I know
It is always on a Windsday
That the winds begin to blow
Alan Alexander Milne -
The ways by which you may get money
The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man.....
Henry David Thoreau
Life Without Principle -
The trees are bare, but they are already living and breathingThe snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. If you have ever recovered from a serious illness, you will be familiar with the blessed state when you are in a delicious state of anticipation, and are liable to smile without any obvious reason.
Isn’t that what nature is experiencing just now? The ground is cold, mud and snow squelches under foot, but how cheerful, gentle and inviting everything is! The air is so clear and transparent that if you were to climb to the top of the pigeon loft or the bell tower, you feel you might actually see the whole universe from end to end.
The sun is shining brightly, and its playful, beaming rays are bathing in the puddles along with the sparrows. The river is swelling and darkening; it has already woken up and very soon will begin to roar. The trees are bare, but they are already living and breathing.
Anton Chekhov
The Exclamation Mark -
I’m not great at making plansI’m not great at making plans into photographic realities. Something always seems to alter the course. Sometimes even the trail itself becomes faint, or comes to an abrupt end, stranding me in NowWhatville.
Many have been the times I’ve journeyed long distances to places that seemed promising on paper, only to discover that my timing was off, or the weather got weird, or some small but crucial detail was overlooked, and I’m found face to face with yet another failure. The clearer my intentions were, the bigger the letdown befell.
Then somewhere in my thirties, I adopted a new attitude. I stopped constructing careful strategies and anticipating specifics returns. I loosened my grip on control, and I began instead to drift in the whimsey of my intuitions, literally wandering aimlessly, and waiting for something to happen. Planlessness provided painlessness.
Looking back now on cherished images, and recalling the actual circumstances of their making, it occurs to me that over half of them were made on the way to, or the way back from, the places where I had expected to find them. Magical moments were seemingly materializing around a bend in the road, as if waiting for my arrival.
This realization was revitalizing, and I no longer wanted to craft any itinerary. As long as I remained in motion, something was bound to present itself.
And so it happened tonight. I’m sure I’ve walked past this tree a couple dozen times over the course of a decade or two. But tonight it seemed to leap out at me.
What is the world magic that nudges me to take notice of this peculiar tree on this perfect night?
-
....but most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life....but most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with mankind- not with anyone in particular, but with whoever that he happened to come across.
His life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate entity. It only had meaning as part of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious.
Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace -
Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me
Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
Oscar Wilde
De Profundis
Lately What Preys On My Mind
-
I am a dreamerI am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
White Nights -
strangers in their birthplaceI have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.
W. Somerset Maugham
The Moon and Sixpence -
Maybe do it anywayIt takes a bit of gumption
to wake up every day
to the fickle world
and yet cleave
to your morals
and values
And not flinch
at the slightest inflection
of disrespect or disdain
from wild ones
And not give in
and mimic
the mockery
of blending in
void of integrity
Standing resplendent
among the dull and dirty
who are no longer enthralled
with the pure light of day
Who’ve renounced their identity
for worldy pleasures
It takes audacity to live
individually, intellectually,
and compassionately.
Maybe do it anyway
Emmanuella Raphaelle -
PrisonerI am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.
Howard Zinn
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Time -
I was astonished, bewildered...I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy...
But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head...
The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you.
From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.
Howard Zinn
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times -
DisintegrationThere can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency, as there can be no leadership without it.
Edward Snowden -
We came to lose our leavesWe did not come here
to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves
like the trees,
Trees that start again,
Drawing up from deeper roots.
Robert Bly
Eating the Honey of Words -
pay backIn the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat, Pray, Love -
There are different kinds of darkness...
There are different kinds of darkness,” Rhys said. I kept my eyes shut. “There is the darkness that frightens, the darkness that soothes, the darkness that is restful.” I pictured each. “There is the darkness of lovers, and the darkness of assassins. It becomes what the bearer wishes it to be, needs it to be. It is not wholly bad or good.
Sarah J. Maas
A Court of Mist and Fury -
the trademark of the truly aliveTo feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, it is the trademark of the truly alive and compassionate. It is perhaps not the empath who is broken, but our society that has become dysfunctional and emotionally disabled. There is no shame in expressing our authentic feelings. Those who are at times described as being a 'hot mess' or having 'too many issues' are the very fabric of what keeps the dream alive for a more caring, humane world. We need never be ashamed to let our tears shine a light in this world.
Anthon St. Maarten
