To be great, be whole;Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.Be whole in everything. Put all you areInto the smallest thing you do.So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendorBecause it blooms up above.— Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa An early morning. Out the door long before the dawn brought me deep…
“I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.” — Naomi Shihab Nye (with a nod to @MayaCPopa for showing the way) Fame is overrated, contribution is where it’s at. We are utilitarian at…
you will never catch up.Walk around feeling like a leafknow you could tumble at any second.Then decide what to do with your time.― Naomi Shihab Nye, The Art of Disappearing I’ve fallen in love with the bullet journal again. It’s not so much because of a love of organization, it’s more a need for organization…
Kindred comes from a combination of kin and the Old English word ræden (“condition”), which itself comes from the verb rædan, meaning “to advise.” — Merriam-Webster Dictionary Talking to a friend about poetry, I mentioned a poem by Li-Young Lee, and paused our phone conversation while she read it, waiting for the payoff when one…
He is seated in the first darkness of his body sitting in the lighter dark of the room, the greater light of day behind him, beyond the windows, where Time is the country. His body throws two shadows: One onto the table and the piece of paper before him, and one onto his mind. One…
“If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness,…
Dear heart, I shall not altogether die.Something of my elusive scattered spiritshall within the line’s diaphanous urnby Poetry be piously preserved.— Samuel Beckett, Non Omnis Moriar Samuel Beckett’s first stanza is a mic drop precisely because we feel the truth in it. Non Omnis Moriar—not everything dies—because we create ripples that reverberate and live beyond…
You always have two options.You can push harder.You can remove friction.— Greg McKeown We all know where we should push harder in our lives to reach personal goals. We also ought to think more about elimination. Shedding ourselves of artificial expectations and dreams that don’t resonate. Moving away from habits, tasks, people or careers that…
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,pray that the road is long,full of adventure, full of knowledge.The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,the angry Poseidon – do not fear them:You will never find such as these on your path,if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fineemotion touches your spirit and your body.The Lestrygonians and the…
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.” ― Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart “Imagine that you’re unwell and in a foul mood, and they’re taking…