You are who you are. And you are wonderful.

To dream of the person you wish to be is to waste the person you are. - Anonymous

When My Mind Is Still

When My Mind is Still

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I remember things too easily forgotten:
The purity of early love,
The maturity of unselfish love that asks --
desires -- nothing but another's good,
The idealism that has persisted through all the tempest of life.

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I can find a quiet assurance, an inner peace, in the core of my being.
It can face the doubt, the loneliness, the anxiety,
Can accept these harsh realities and can even grow
Because of these challenges to my essential being.

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I can sense my basic humanity,
And then I know that all men and women are my brothers and sisters.
Nothing but my own fear and distrust can separate me from the love of friends.
If I can trust others, accept them, enjoy them,
Then my life shall surely be richer and more full.
If I can accept others, this will help them to be more truly themselves,
And they will be more able to accept me.

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I know how much life has given me:
The history of the race, friends and family,
The opportunity to work, the chance to build myself.
Then wells within me the urge to live more abundantly,
With greater trust and joy,
With more profound seriousness and earnest service,
And yet more calmly at the heart of life.

- Paul Beattie was a Unitarian Universalist minister, serving in congregations including in Kansas City, Missouri, and last at the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh, PA. He was also president of the Fellowship of Religious Humanists, among his many involvements.

Traveling

We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment. – Hillaire Belloc

a frog and a bear in their natural habitat: a Studebaker

Despair is not just the extra tire in your trunk

But something occurred to me as I sped through that dirty shroud of fog, something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness.

At certain moments, it is reason enough to live. - Steve Almond

Once we lose hope, then we lose our humanity

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. - Thich Nhat Hanh

I agree

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. – Neil Gaiman

Sometimes life gets a little challenging: that's when you fight back.

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are. – Bernice
Johnson Reagan

Famous Last Words

These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact. – William James, Is Life Worth Living

We'll Meet Again - Johnny Cash

Say We'll Meet Again - Lindsey Buckingham
Just say we'll meet again
When the sunset spell is gone in the wind
Please say we'll meet again
Everyone sees a tear in the seam
But talks about the weather
Everyone pays a price for these dreams
So why not dream these dreams together

Just say we'll meet again
When the sunset spell is gone in the wind
Please say we'll meet again

That was a dream, that was a time
But nothing lasts forever
Sooner or later we all must go blind
But we can dream these dreams together

Just say we'll meet again
When the sunset spell is gone in the wind
Please say we'll meet again

t-minus one

I think quotes are very dangerous things. - Kate Bush

Hope is a good thing

Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope. – Andy Dufresne and Red, Shawkshank Redemption

Shawshank Redemption - Hope

Vidivodo.com : the shawshank redemption - final scene  Etiket: movie 

It's the expectations that make it harder

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. – William Blake

Procrastination station

Don't get it right, just get it written. ~ James Thurber

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

("An Untested Hypothesis Suggesting That the Chemical [In Our Brains] by Which We Are Able to Experience the Sensation of Being in Love Is the Same Chemical That Caused the "Big Bang" That Was the Birth of the Accelerating Universe")

All men have a sweetness in their life. That is what helps them go on. It is towards that they turn when they feel too worn out. – Albert Camus

 

What is the light
That you have
Shining all around you?
Is it chemically derived?

Cause if it’s natural
Something glowing from inside
Shining all around you
It’s potential has arrived

Looking into space, it surrounds you
Love is the place that you’re drawn to
Looking into space, it surrounds you
Love is the face that you’re drawn to

What is the light
That you have
Shining all around you?
Is it chemically derived?

Life is a process...

Life is a process. We are a process. The universe is a process. – Anne Wilson Schaef

Mathematician + coffee = Erdos number...?? what

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems. - Paul Erdos

It's the effort

And with the next race in mind, each of us, in our place, will most likely silently go about our usual training. Even if, seen from the outside, or from some higher vantage point, this sort of life looks pointless or futile, or even extremely inefficient, it doesn’t bother me. Maybe it’s some pointless act like, as I’ve said before, pouring water into an old pan that has a hole in the bottom, but at least the effort you put into it remains. Whether it’s good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what’s most important is what you can’t see but can feel in your heart. To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don’t necessarily end up so. That’s the feeling I have, as someone who’s felt this, who’s experienced it. – Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Forgive and Move On

By forgiving and choosing to move on, one takes the power back to morph it into positive energy. – Eugenia Tripputi

I ain't afraid of nuthin'. Nothin'

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live. – Dorothy Thompson

What is there to be afraid of, anyway?

The secret

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. – Albert Schweitzer