Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
photo: martin dawes
This is, I think, what holiness is:
the natural world, where every moment is full
of the passion to keep moving.
Inside every mind there’s a hermit’s cave full of light,
full of snow, full of concentration.
I’ve knelt there, and so have you,
hanging on to what you love,
to what is lovely.
Mary Oliver, At the Lake
photo of St. Finbar’s Oratory, Gougane Barra by (WT shared) Spircle at wts Wikivoyage
Leave everything as it is, in fundamental simplicity,
and clarity will arise by itself.
Only by doing nothing
will you do all there is to be done.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
phot randi hausken
Our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it.
Joseph Campbell
We get to this point in our life [where] we see that stepping into a larger life is intimidating because it requires that we risk being who we really are, that is, what wants to come to the world through us – rather than serving our ego comforts or whatever instructions came our way. We cannot expect someone else to give us permission. The parent complexes, or the culture complexes, are embedded in our history and will never stop saying what they always said. So it is up to us at this later point, when we have served those voices so long, to realize that our own psyches have a unique point of view, that each one of us is different and that we are bound for different destinies. Stepping into largeness will require that we discern our personal authority – rather than the authority of others or the authority of our internalized admonitions – and live this inner authority with risk and boldness.
James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a more Considered Life.
photo wiros
In novels – as in life – there is no perfection. We do the best we can with the tools we have at our disposal. Given that we are changing, the tools are changing, the thing itself is changing — there must be a moment when we stop. When we say, This is the best I can do for now… There is nobility in the effort, courage in the dailiness — the doggedness. It is a process of trying and failing. Of beginning again.
Dani Shapiro, Devotion
photo filiberto strazzari
