Sweet and Sour; Hard and Soft; Sad and Beautiful

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. – Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

The past is not done with us

When unresolved issues are writing our life story, we are not our own autobiographers; we are merely recorders of how the past continues, often without our awareness, to intrude upon our present experience and shape our future directions. – Daniel Siegel, MD

It's just a change in me...

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mood of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form... happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up. - Charles L. Morgan

 

Changed Priorities Ahead

Everything you now do is something you have chosen to do. Some people don't want to believe that. But if you're over age twenty-one, your life is what you're making of it. To change your life, you need to change your priorities. – John C. Maxwell

Growth

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing. – William Butler Yeats

 

Self-Discovery with the Flaming Lips

I know this is a one-quote a day blog, but since both of these lines come from the same song, I decided to make an exception.

There are things you can't avoid, you have to face them when you're not prepared to face them

I don't know where the sun beams end and the star
Lights begins it's all a mystery
And I don't know how a man decides what right for his
Own life - it's all a mystery

-The Flaming Lips, Fight Test