Live the questions

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and try to love the questions themselves.  

Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be 

given you because you would not be able 

to live them.  And the point is to live everything.  

Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then 

gradually, without noticing it, live along some

distant day into the answers.

~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet

Clearly, I need to read more Rilke.

Quote of the day

When we embrace the uncertainties that surround life choices, and take action despite those uncertainties, we will be rewarded with a life that is truly ours.

~ page 171, Becoming a Life Change Artist

Letting go of preconceptions -- ours and those of others

. . . when we are trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up it is dangerous to bring preconceptions of ourselves -- fears, biases, or negative ideas about ourselves -- into the process.  When we allow ourselves to succumb to fears, biases, & self-criticism, we paralyze ourselves. We are unable to see new possibilities, and therefore to make positive changes in our lives . . . to become a life change artist, we need to see how others see us, and make a decision about whether others' views of us are consistent with how we see ourselves, or how we would like to see ourselves.

~page 110-111, Becoming a Life Change Artist:  Seven Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life by Fred Mandell, Ph.D., & Kathleen Jordan, Ph.D.

Quote of the day

Imagining a future life creates the brain pathways that make it easier for you to actually make the changes you have imagined.

~page 106, Becoming a Life Change Artist by Fred Mandell & Kathleen Jordan 

My friend Tamie sent me a key chain from Ireland earlier this month.  I haven't had one for quite a while.  This instant, there are two keys on it -- one is for my friend Jen's house, where my seven-year-old and I have been living since the 12th of June and the other is to the store I work at -- a new job I started on July 1st.  Very soon, though, the key chain will also hold a key to a brand-new apartment for Fiona and I.  I didn't expect that having a key chain with my own keys on it would be so empowering, but it is -- I have my own keys to my own life - it's makes it easier to imagine the rest of the picture, of having power and security and goodness in my life.  This is a good thing.

Quote of the day

"Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do."

~ Byron Katie

 

From Authentic Parenting

Quote of the day

"There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that someone else pulls." 

-Howard Thurman

With thanks to LKT over at The Infusion.

Quote of the day

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Quote of the day

There was, in Josse's experience, nothing more guaranteed to lower the spirits than uncertainty about the future.

~p.82, Fortune Like the Moon by Alys Clare

Quote of the Day

Give thanks for what you are now, and keep
fighting for what you want to be tomorrow.
-
Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros Via Roots of She 

Life choices vs. moral choices

Image via Wikipedia

Since reading Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane, I have continued to ponder what the main character said at one point:

I just notice people sometimes mistake their life choices for their moral ones.
~p.133, Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane 

His words keep bouncing around in my head but I haven't been sure how to articulate my thoughts about why this sentence struck me in such a significant way.

I think that maybe I'm not the only one who (whether occasionally, sometimes, or often) struggles to make that distinction - where *is* the dividing line between something that is a moral issue and something that is simply a choice an individual has made about one part of her life?

Part of the difficulty, perhaps,arises when one thinks carefully about the decisions one makes. Most people have areas of their life within which they make more deliberate decisions.  I believe that it is those very decisions, the ones you take more time with, the ones that, perhaps, differ from those around you, that are the hardest to feel flexible about. 

Should our end goal be to acknowledge that even if we've carefully made life choices that are based on ethical or moral reasoning doesn't mean that someone who takes a different path is wrong?

Yep

No matter how long or short her stay here in the river community, she would need a few essentials to make her life agreeable and eventually she would have to come up with a more permanent plan.  

But not today.  Today she merely had to figure out how to survive until tomorrow.

p. 41, Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn

Quote of the day

Image via Wikipedia

Never give up.  No one knows what's going to happen next.
~L. Frank Baum (quoted in Blackout by Connie Willis)

Tomorrow Will Come

Cover of How to Survive the Loss of a Love

Life contains many positive experiences. 

The good is on its way.

No doubt about it, tomorrow will come.

~p.38, How to Survive the Loss of a Love by Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D., Melba Colgrove, Ph.D., & Peter McWilliams

Quote of the day

Cover of How to Survive the Loss of a Love

You are much more than the emotional wound you are currently suffering.  Don't lose sight of that.

Beneath the surface turmoil:

--you are good

--you are whole

--you are beautiful

just because you are.

p.32, How to Survive the Loss of a Love by Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D., Melba Colgrove, Ph.D., & Peter McWilliams

Quote of the Day

We cannot become the person we long to be by ignoring the persons we have been.

~Richard Hirsch, Mazhor LeYamim Nora'im:  Prayerbook for the Days of Awe

Quote of the day

Friendship is one of the sweetest joys of life.  Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of their trial had they not found a friend.  

~Charles H. Spurgeon

Love to the many people who are helping me keep my head above water these days. It's not easy.

Quote of the day

Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day. 

~Sir William Osler, physician, 1849-1919

Quote of the day

Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.  Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Quote of the Day -- Creativity lives in the unknown

Transition and change bring us into the unknown -- where creativity lives -- and from this unknown, we can create in our lives that which did not exist before.  We can initiate and respond to life-changing events or internal uneasiness with creativity and resourcefulness and create a life of meaning and purpose.  So instead of fighting the currents in our river, instead of longing for the stability of the shore, we can flow with the river, finding our own unique way to make the journey.

~page 6, Becoming a Life Change Artist: Seven Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life by Fred Mandell, Ph.D. & Kathleen Jordan, Ph.D.

Quote of the Day -- mistakes

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
~Elbert Hubbard


Thanks to Vicki from Reading at the Beach for the quote.  What do you all think?