“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
On Children
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.”
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
– Khalil Gibran, in The Prophet
Life’s Complexity
“Life is complex.
Each one of us must make his own path through life.
There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers.
The right road for one is the wrong road for another.
The journey of life is not paved in blacktop [bitumen]; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs.
It is a rocky path through the wilderness.”
M. Scott Peck.
Fixing the Movie
“Trying to fix the world is like trying to change a movie by manipulating the movie screen. The world as we know it is simply a screen onto which we project our thoughts. Until we change those thoughts, the movie stays the same.
Whenever our outer world remains stuck, it is incumbent upon us to look, not outward, but inward. It is a call to find the places in ourselves where we are holding on to old ways.”
– Marianne Williamson
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).
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
The Search for Our True Selves
“The search for the true self, or higher self, is at the core of all human motivation. Whether we know it or not, we are searching for this connection, and the drive is always present, even if subconscious.”
– David Cumes.
Listening to Life 