Metamorphosis
/“What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”
Photo by José Ignacio García Zajaczkowski on Unsplash
The real deal
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Photo by Jay Sadoff on Unsplash
“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.”
Perspective
/“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.”
Photo by Saketh Garuda on Unsplash
Want not want
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Photo by Parag Sharma on Unsplash
“Fantasies have to be unrealistic because the moment, the second that you get what you seek, you don’t, you can’t want it anymore. In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It’s not the ‘it’ that you want, it’s the fantasy of ‘it.’ So, desire supports crazy fantasies. This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Or why we say ‘the hunt is sweeter than the kill.’ Or ‘be careful what you wish for.’ Not because you’ll get it, but because you’re doomed not to want it once you do. So the lesson of Lacan is, living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals, and not to measure your life by what you’ve attained in terms of your desires but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.”
Of towels and throwing
/“Everybody comes to a point in their life when they want to quit, but it’s what you do at that moment that determines who you are.”
Photo by Fabian Irsara on Unsplash
Sick society
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Photo by Andrew Buchanan on Unsplash
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Life is discovery
/“We cannot teach people anything. We can only help them discover it within themselves.”
Photo by Eidy Bambang-Sunaryo on Unsplash
Self-respect
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Photo by Alex Wigan on Unsplash
This particular lesson took too long to finally sink in.
“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy.”
– Robert Tew
Simply profound
/What you seek is seeking you.
– Rumi
Photo by Laurent Naville on Unsplash
Change
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Photo by Jason Wong on Unsplash
We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.
– Sheryl Sandberg
The only things that matter
/Recently I've caught a few episodes of a show in which the main character—who was alive during the American Revolutionary War—is brought back to life in present day. Various movies and books play with the same theme, but I found this show to have decent writing and a clever way of juxtaposing past and present so it reminds us just how fortunate we are to be alive—how much we have, yet take for granted.
Photo by Damian Markutt on Unsplash
Make it gold
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Photo by Johnny McClung on Unsplash
It's a few minutes before New Year's.
I remember one year I celebrated with my father and my cousin Charlie, who was several years older than I was (thirteen at the time). Minutes after the clock struck 12, I asked my cousin, "What does it feel like to live in the 90's?" He paused for a second and said, "Exactly the same as it did in the 80's."
As little as it was, my bubble burst. I was clinging to some illusion that time could change something. But time doesn't change anything. We do.
Here's to a new year. Here's to making it golden.
Infinities
/Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
– Albert Einstein
Photo by Xavier Coiffic on Unsplash
Forever
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Photo by Ivy Nevares
Beyond those clouds, it just goes on forever.
Foot for thought
/The timing of events can be eerie sometimes. I was having a conversation with a couple of friends earlier today on being right. We weren't talking about your regular, run-of-the-mill rightness; no, this was the wrong type of right—I'm talking stealth, ninja, smokescreen, the works. When you're on the receiving end, you feel something is terribly wrong, but it's hard to put your finger on it because what the person says is seemingly reasonable. And when you're the giver, even if you're aware you've just put your entire foot in your mouth, you go right ahead and reach for the other one.
A few hours later this little gem arrived from my friend, Sean. (I wasn't able to find the author of this image, so if you know the source, please let me know.) Aaah timing!
Painfully beautiful
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Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
I'm a fan of C.S. Lewis, even though I've read very little of his work. Truly I'm a fan of anyone who can take a crude amalgam of thoughts, feelings and experience, and, with a few simple words, crystalize them into something painfully beautiful.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
– C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Always
/When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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Time to choose
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Photo by Lucca Lazzarini on Unsplash
I have a soft spot for duality, for opposites, contrast. Invariably, regardless of the art or mode of expression, I'm drawn in.
There's a part in Neale Donald Walsch's book, Conversations with God, that talks about every choice coming down to love or fear—nothing in between. It's not the first time I've heard this, but the manner in which it was delivered stirred up experiences past.
Language can be boiled down to its most essential building blocks. Take the most basic computer language: nothing but zeros and ones. If there were a language behind the universe—creating, morphing, dissolving it—it would be this. At least as humans are concerned, may be that's all there is: love or fear.
We choose all the time. It's time to choose differently.