The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.
~ Randy Pausch
slip:4a571.
Brick walls are there for a reason →
How to keep time from moving so fast →
Savoring what’s familiar does something similar. Instead of spending our time on autopilot mode, we notice the richness embedded in our familiar routines. Choose something familiar that you experience regularly—drinking your morning coffee, picking up your kids from daycare, or chatting with a coworker—and make a concerted effort to savor, and be grateful for that experience. I personally find meditation, more than almost anything else, helps me savor these small things every day.
~ Chris Bailey from, How to keep time from moving so fast
slip:4uaiho2.
ɕ
Stop aspiring →
But if aspiring was our true fulcrum, you’d be on your throne already. Here’s the truth: It’s not the heights we aspire to but the FLOOR WE PUT UP WITH that determines our place.
~ Bryan Ward from, Stop Aspiring
slip:4utiai3.
A good friend recently said something to the effect of, “Life is full of compromises which you cannot avoid. So don’t compromise with yourself.”
I find both of these things are very useful for me to keep in mind.
ɕ
Here We Are →
Forty years after the Voyager sailed into space, we seem to have lost sight of this beautiful and sobering perspective, drifting further and further into our divides, fragmenting our fragile home pixel into more and more warring factions, and forgetting that we are bound together by the improbable miracle of life on this Pale Blue Dot and a shared cosmic destiny.
~ Maria Popova from, Here We Are
slip:4ubahe3.
Also quoted in this piece is Carl Sagan’s original commentary on the “pale blue dot”. Gets me every time.
ɕ
Never predict →
I’ve always been very careful never to predict anything that has not already happened.
~ Marshall McLuhan
slip:4a208.
Happened to things →
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
~ Leonardo da Vinci
slip:4a550.
Upper west side →
ɕ
What happens when men flee the wild →
…as we flee the discomfort of the wild without, so we flee those of the wild within, estranging ourselves from the power and beauty of the uncharted life…
~ Bryan Ward from, What Happens When Men Flee The Wild
slip:4utiai4.
ɕ
The center of your being →
At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.
~ Lao Tzu
slip:4a254.
Sometimes everything just falls into place →
So I went for a walk to shake off the aches from two solid days of training at the new LVPK Academy. And I got to the part where I normally loop back and I thought, “I’ve never actually walked up to that upper parking lot…” So I did. Above the lot, another level higher, is a wide open soccer/football field with brilliant green grass, and those 5-tier, ubiqitous, aluminum bleachers. I laid down on the top-most, narrow bleacher– just basking as the bright sun, and the cold wind argued back and forth about wether it was warm or cold weather. Just staring up at this gorgeous blue sky containing one of those new-fangled aeroplanes and one of those old-beaked vultures– the teeny tiny black speck near thebottom, just a bit to the right, …you thought it was a mark on your screen didn’t you? Ever do that yoga pose where you cross your legs and lay back on something alinged along your spine, put your hands behind your head, crack open your entire chest, pull your shoulder blads back and just streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch?
ɕ