“We are born with only one obligation – to be completely who we are.”
– Mark Nepo
Born With One Obligation
To Listen
“To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.”
– Mark Nepo
Fewer Regrets
“For me, success is not a public thing. It’s a private thing. It’s when you have fewer and fewer regrets.”
– Toni Morrison
(via Kai)
Storm
“Every storm runs out of rain.”
– Maya Angelou
Completely Undone
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
— Cynthia Occelli
When A Lot of Things Start Going Wrong All at Once
“When a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born—and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.”
– Anne Lamott
Beauty
“If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?”
– Ernst Haas
Patience
“Patience is also a form of action.”
– Auguste Rodin
Watch With Glittering Eyes
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.
Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
— Roald Dahl
Magic
“Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke
I remember I saw someone use Shazam for the first time. It felt like magic.
Human Behavior
“See all human behavior
as one of two things:
either love,
or a call for love.”
– Marianne Williamson
Why am I Seeing and Feeling This?
“Ask yourself: Why am I seeing and feeling this? How am I growing? What am I learning? Remember: Every coincidence is potentially meaningful. How high your awareness level is determines how much meaning you get from your world.”
– Ansel Adams
(via Nitch)
This!
“Be curious, not judgmental.”
– Ted Lasso
Our Own Life
Our own life has to be our message.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
Every Person
“Every person is a world to explore.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh
Nobody Will Stop You From Creating
“Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow… The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don’t show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.”
– Kurt Vonnegut
The World is Movement
“For the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving.”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
(via Nitch)
The Creative Act
“The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas. It is the night sea journey, the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets, and you let these nets down…sometimes, something tears through them that leaves them in shreds and you just row for shore, and put your head under your bed and pray. At other times what slips through are the minutiae, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea chasing. But, sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward.”
– Terence McKenna
(via Nitch)
Doing Things For Truth’s Sake
“I’ll tell you one thing for sure: once you get to the point where you’re actually doing things for truth’s sake, then nobody can ever touch you again because you’re harmonizing with a greater power.”
– George Harrison
(via Nitch)
Belonging
“I belong everywhere I go, no matter where it is, or who it I am with, as long as I never betray myself. The minute I become who you want me to be, in order to fit in and make sure people like me, is the moment I no longer belong anywhere.”
– Brene Brown
(This interview with Brene Brown is well worth your time.)
Perpetual Kindness
“Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”
– Leo Tolstoy
(via)
Maybe love is…
“Maybe, when it comes down to it, love is not about chasing another human being. Maybe, love is about chasing yourself. Chasing your growth. Chasing your hope.
Maybe love is about learning how to be gentle with yourself, how to believe in the way the Universe has removed certain people from your life. And maybe love grows within you when you learn how to trust your own heart, when you learn how to walk away from the things that have not cared for it. Maybe, love is about learning how to accept that sometimes even beautiful things end, that sometimes the timing isn’t right. And maybe love is about learning that endings aren’t something to regret; maybe it is about learning how to let go, how to appreciate the things you experienced at the hands of caring that were real and hopeful and light in a world that sometimes fails to be soft.
Maybe, love is about learning how to be alone. Maybe it is about learning how to wake up in the middle of the bed. How to make just one cup of coffee in the morning. How to hold your own heart, how to take up space. Maybe there is beauty to be found in falling in love with your growth, in learning how to stop filling voids with other human beings, and instead, in slowly having the courage to heal those voids yourself.
Maybe love is about learning how to be proud of the person you are stretching into, is about embracing the beauty and the depth that exists in trying for something while you are here. And maybe within that, love is about honoring your heart. Maybe the truest, and most honest, extension of love exists in the way you learn how to love yourself, exists in the way you learn how to be compassionate towards the parts of yourself, and your journey, that no one else claps for.
Maybe, love exists in the way you fight to be here, in the way you crash your heart into this world. Maybe, love is about you — being your own strength, being your own safe place. Maybe, when it comes down to it, love is about finally learning how to give yourself the same love you so beautifully give to others. Maybe, love is about embracing the person you are becoming, and believing in your heart, on even your hardest of days.”
Regard Yourself As A Cloud
“Regard yourself as a cloud, in the flesh, because you see, clouds never make mistakes. Did you ever see a cloud that was misshapen? Did you ever see a badly designed wave? No, they always do the right thing. But if you will treat yourself for a while as a cloud or a wave, and realize that you can’t make a mistake whatever you do. Because even if you do something that appears totally disastrous, it will all come out in the wash somehow or another. Then through this capacity you will develop a kind of confidence. And through confidence you will be able to trust your own intuition.”
— Alan Watts
