Tag: heart

You are all possibilities

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Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed
by circumstance, how great reputations
dissolve with infirmity and how you,
in particular, stand a hairsbreadth from losing
everyone you hold dear.

Then, look back down the path to the north,
the way you came, as if seeing
your entire past and then south
over the hazy blue coast as if present
to a broad future.

Recall the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not.

David Whyte, Mameen (extract)

The enigma of life

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Ici la vie continue égale et monotone en surface, pleine d’éclairs, de sommets et de désepérance, dans les profondeurs. Nous sommes arrivés maintenant á un stade de vie si riche en apprehensions nouvelles intransmissibles aux autres âges de la vie – on se sent rempli á la fois de tant de douceur et de tant de désespoir – l’énigme de cette vie grandit, grandit, vous submerge et vous écrase, puis tout á coup en une lueur suprême on prend conscience due “sacré.”

Here life goes on, even and monotonous on the surface, full of lightning, of summits and of despair, in its depths. We have now arrived at a stage in life so rich in new perceptions that cannot be transmitted to those at another stage – one feels at the same time full of so much gentleness and so much despair – the enigma of this life grows, grows, drowns one and crushes one, then all of a sudden in a supreme moment of light one becomes aware of the sacred.

Letter written from Eugénie to May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

In retrospect

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One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

Freud, Letter to Jung, 1907

Maybe

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With a lot of uncertainty these days, it is easy to get discouraged…

For once
the mocking, predictable voice
inside my head that says “No way”
is silent.
In fact, I think I can just barely make out
some other, quieter voice, whispering,
“Maybe.”

 Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment

…and now

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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.

Do justly, now.

Love mercy, now.

Walk humbly, now.

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

The Talmud

Threshold

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There are thresholds which thought alone, left to itself, can never permit us to cross.

An experience is required – an experience of poverty, of sickness.

Gabriel Marcel,  quoted in Gelin, Les Pauvres de Yahvé