“To meet someone. And be met.
To be chosen. To choose.
To love. To be loved.
This is everything.”
— Mark Groves
This is everything.
A Heart-Centered Body of Work
“The point of it all is not to exhaust myself trying to build a body of work that eclipses my life, but to create a heart-centered body of work.”
What does time well spent mean to you? Resources to help you reflect.
Asking for What You Want
“There’s a ton you can get in life if you’re willing to submit yourself to the mortifying horror of asking for it.”
(via)
The Heart of Clarity
“Despite how open, peaceful, and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you, as deeply as they’ve met themselves. This is the heart of clarity.”
— Matt Kahn
Our Presence
“The world needs our immediate presence.”
— Louise Penny, paraphrasing Miguel Cervantes
From How Time is On Your Side, by Bridget Watson Payne
Afraid To Look
“You will
find yourself
in all the of the places
you are afraid
to look.”
— cwpoet
The Person She Becomes
“You will manage to keep a woman in love with you, only for as long as you can keep her in love with the person she becomes when she is with you.”
— C. JoyBell C
Thank you Body
Thank you body,
for teaching me how to love, me
for showing me my deepest depths
also my soft light
for holding me even when I am
kicking and screaming.
thank you body,
for giving me permission
and the courage
to keep showing up
to keep saying yes.— Maribeth Helen Keane
Surrender
“Surrender is not for sissies.”
— L. Weiss
Notice
“Notice what you notice.”
— Martha Beck
How we spend our time…
“How we spend our time is how we spend our days. How we spend our days is how our life goes. How our life goes determines whether we thought it was worth living.”
— Keith Yamashita
Keith reflecting on his relationship to time. Wonderful.
Love Words
“Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.”
— Susan Sontag
The Difficulty of Being in the Present
“Much of what ruins the present is sheer anxiety. The present always contains an enormous number of possibilities, some hugely gruesome, which we are constantly aware of in the background. Anything could theoretically happen, an earthquake, an aneurysm, a rejection – which gives rise to the non-specific anxiety that trails most of us around all the time; the simple dread at the unknownness of what is to come.”
“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
― William Martin
From the book: The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents
Real Religion
“Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.”
— Alan Watts
Two-Mountain People
“The basement of your soul is much deeper than you knew. Some people look into the hidden depths of themselves and they realize that success won’t fill those spaces. Only a spiritual life and unconditional love from family and friends will do. They realize how lucky they are. They are down in the valley, but their health is O.K.; they’re not financially destroyed; they’re about to be dragged on an adventure that will leave them transformed.”
— David Brooks
Thank you Jocelyn for reminding me of one of my favorite reads of 2019: Two-Mountain People
We Have To Stand Up To Evil
“If our leaders are evil, what does one do? . . . If God gives us free will, we are responsible for what we do or what we fail to do . . . . I can’t do what I believe is wrong. We have to stand up to evil.”
Timely quote from the stunning movie A Hidden Life by Terrence Malick
In The Presence of Unconditional Love
“When you are in the presence of unconditional love, that is the optimum environment for your heart to open, because you feel safe, because you realize nobody wants anything from you. The minute that heart opens, you are once again letting in the flow. And that flow is where you experience God.”
— Ram Dass
Emotion As A Currency for Remembering Content
“According to numerous studies, emotion is a basic currency for remembering content. A listener must connect emotionally to what they hear in order to remember what the speaker says. Simply, we remember most vividly the events in our lives in which we were most emotionally impacted.”
Do You Need Charisma to Be a Great Public Speaker?, by Sarah Gershman
Something Extraordinary
“I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen but as the years wasted on nothing ever did unless I caused it.”
— Charles Bukowski
Never Too Late
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”
― Francis Scott Fitzgerald
Walk Beside Me
“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend”.
— Albert Camus
Crush
“A crush represents in pure and perfect form the dynamics of romantic philosophy: the explosive interaction of limited knowledge, outward obstacles to further discovery – and boundless hope.”
The Ideal Place
“I’ve been searching for years for the ideal place. And I’ve come to the realization that the only way to find it is to be it.”
— Alan Watts