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…
On a recent walk I noticed the recently painted median strip dividing the road featured artwork now and then. It seems they painted the road in autumn, as the oak leaves returned to the earth to close their cycle and begin again. A few rebels, wishing for immortality perhaps, found the opportunity to capture the…
This is the beginning of the rest of your lifeYou better start movin’ like you’re running out of timeThe realization coming over your mindThat it should be a canterIf you could just find the answerYou know it could be a canterIf you were just a wee bit less of a wankerMore than half ae’ the…
“Productive activity has nothing to do with being swept away by the inertia of busyness. It is not about quantity, either. Rather, it is a deliberate choice of where and how to direct one’s attention.” — Brad Stulberg, The Practice of Groundedness We seek solitude, when possible, in the quiet places. Places of stoic beauty with…
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…
Every day I die again, and again I’m rebornEvery day I have to find the courageTo walk out into the streetWith arms outGot a love you can’t defeatNeither down nor outThere’s nothing you have that I needI can breatheBreathe now— U2, Breathe When you settle into a conversation about the best U2 songs, well, it’s…
Work is a funny thing, for it represents so much of our identity, yet, if we live well, it’s only a small part of who we are. For if this life is about the accumulation of experiences, relationships, knowledge and self-understanding, work adds to each of these things but isn’t all of any of them….
“The important thing is never to let oneself be guided by the opinion of one’s contemporaries; to continue steadfastly on one’s way without letting oneself be either defeated by failure or diverted by applause.” — Gustav Mahler Gustav Mahler was an Austrian composer who’s work is familiar to us whether we know it or not….
Planning is generally done in earnest this time of year, but at some point, action must take over. Too much planning becomes procrastination. We can plan ourselves all the way to the grave if we let ourselves. We must do to become. I believe it was Melissa Heisler who said living is a verb, not…