“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
– T.S. Elliot
Home is People
“Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more”.
– Robin Hobb
Time, the bastard Time.
“Where does the discontent start?
You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields.
And to prod all these there’s time, the bastard Time.
The end of life is now not so terribly far away – you can see it the way you see the finish line when you come into the stretch – and your mind says,
‘Have I worked enough? Have I eaten enough? Have I loved enough?’
All of these, of course, are the foundations of man’s greatest curse, and perhaps his greatest glory. ‘What has my life meant so far, and what can it mean in the time left to me?”
– John Steinbeck (in Sweet Thursday).
A Full Life
“A full life is a life full of pain.
But the only alternative is not to live fully, or not to live at all.”
M. Scott Peck, in The Road Less Travelled.
The True Purpose of Relationships
“Our most significant relationships exist for a very different reason than we believe, either personally as individuals or collectively as a society.
Their true purpose is not to make us happy, not to meet our needs, not to define for us our niche in society, not to keep us safe … but to cause us to grow towards the Light.”
– Robin Norwood
Your Memory Palace
“Our memories make us who we are…
Choose one moment in every day that is worth cherishing,
welcome that moment into your Memory Palace,
nurture it always, and it will never leave you”.
– Ross Welford in Time Travelling with a Hamster.
The Meaning of Life: This Moment
“When you realise that you live in, that indeed you are this moment, now, and no other, you must relax and taste to the full, whether it be pleasure or pain. At once it becomes obvious why this universe exists … The whole problem of justifying nature, of trying to make life mean something in terms of its future, disappears utterly. Obviously it all exists for this moment. It is a dance, and when you are dancing you are not intent on getting somewhere. You go round and round, but not under the illusion that you are pursuing something, or fleeing from the jaws of hell. The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.”
– Alan Watts in The Wisdom of Insecurity
Let me Live my Life
– I spotted the following words painted amongst hippy flowers and peace signs, on the back of a VW Combi Van. Of course, the Combi Van was driving between Dunsborough & Busselton, WA!
“I’m the one who has to die, so let me live my life the way I want”.
Happiness
John had
Great Big
Waterproof
Boots on;
John had
Great Big
Waterproof Hat;
John had a
Great Big Mackintosh –
And that
(Said John)
Is
That.
– A.A. Milne.
Going Out
“I only went out for a walk and finally decided to stay until sundown, for going out I discovered was actually going in.
– John Muir
Listening to Life 