Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid.
Pema Chödrön, The In-Between state
It takes time and patient practice to develop qualities that make for a lasting effect. This idea is not easy to hold on to in a society that prizes immediate results. Emptying the mind of the need to be noticed, or thought as special, allows us to just be ourselves in a simple way:
The sage Chuang-Tzu was walking with a disciple on a hilltop. They saw a crooked, ancient tree without a single straight branch. The disciple said the tree is useless, nothing from it can be used. Chuang-Tzu replied: That’s the reason it is ancient. Everyone seems to know how useful it is to be useful. No one seems to know how useful it is to be useless.
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge
faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov
If we climb high enough,
we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
Irving Yalom
Everyone has a life that is different from the ‘I’ of daily consciousness, a life that is trying to live through the ‘I’ who is its vessel. This is what the poet knows and what every wisdom tradition teaches; there is a great gulf between the way my ego wants to identify me, with its protective masks and self-serving fictions, and my true self. The soul is like a wild animal; tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy. The soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions.
Parker Palmer, Let your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
As concerns the art of living, the material is your own life.
No great thing is created suddenly.
There must be time.
Give your best and always be kind.
Epictetus, AD 55 – 135, Greek Stoic philosopher
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