“We can only be here. We can’t leave. We’re always here. Examine your life and you’ll see that this is the case.”
Stories about finding your heart and soul around the world.
“I’ve always said that in order to lead the life you want, you need to start living it,” she said, sitting up in bed. Staring out the window, she added, “it won’t just come to you.”
"As… a graphic designer… my stock in trade—like that of any creative person—has been perspective, looking at things in new ways, seeing angles, patterns, and details that I might orchestrate to catch the eye and the fancy.
For creative people, not deciding things too quickly is essential. Being willing to leave the “doors” of decision open is what enables us to keep our perspective fluid, moving freely from one conceptual “room” to another, exploring those fresh points of view. That willingness, that openness, is the very heart and soul of creativity.
When you try different angles from which to approach things, different lenses to see them and different dimensions to understanding them, it nurtures your curiosity and wonder, and gives you points of access to nature—both sensory and spiritual—where there might otherwise be none."
Jeffrey D. Willius, The Art of Ambivalence: Not Knowing Can Be A Good Thing
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads off the well-worn path. And that will make all the difference.”
“The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.”
“You can’t dictate to yourself what you want. You either want it or you don’t.”
“My favourite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”
“The creative process is first imagining and then believing the state imagined.”
“When the mystery of the connection goes, love goes. It’s that simple. This suggests that it isn’t love that is so important to us but the mystery itself. The love connection may be merely a device to put us in contact with the mystery, and we long for love to last so that the ecstasy of being near the mystery will last. It is contrary to the nature of mystery to stand still. Yet it’s always there, somewhere, a world on the other side of the mirror, a promise in the next pair of eyes that smile at us. We glimpse it when WE stand still. The romance of new love, the romance of solitude, the romance of objecthood, the romance of ancient pyramids and distant stars are means of making contact with the mystery. When it comes to perpetuating it, however, I got no advice. But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts I know:
1. Everything is a part of it.
2. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”
“When you notice the mind telling you tales about a future that hasn’t happened yet, see if you can acknowledge that this is simply a thought, and neither a fact, nor the truth. Then turn your attention to what needs to be done in that moment to begin moving toward your goal. Keep your attention in the present moment, and when the mind skips ahead to not accepting your own statuette, remember that this is a thought, not a fact, and turn your attention back to what needs doing in that moment”
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
T.S. Elliot
Excerpt from: EAST COKER (No. 2 of Four Quartets)
“We must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
“In anything at all, perfection is attained not when there’s no longer anything to add, but when there’s no longer anything to take away.”
“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”
“When you’re at the beginning, don’t obsess about the middle, because the middle is going to look different once you get there. Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving.”
“She finally didn’t care to understand all that much about her emotional life; she just went ahead and did it. The point, she thought, was to attend the meager theater of it, quietly, and not stand up in the middle and shout, “Oh, my God, you can see the crew backstage!” There was a point at which the study of something became a frightening and naive thing.”
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
“If you hold on to the handle, she said, it’s easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it’s more fun if you just let the wind carry you.”
“They came to sit & dangle their feet off the edge of the world and after awhile they forgot everything but the good and true things they would do someday.”