In old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves
Growing, ripening, aging, dying — the passing of time is predestined, inevitable. There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning — devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work… In old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves. One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion. ~ Simone de Beauvoir
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred? - Richard Dawkins
Is it possible for a man to be a good man when he is also a bad man?
Is it possible for a man to be a good man when he is also a bad man? Is it possible for evil to coexist with goodness and if so do those terms mean anything anymore when they are pushed into such an uncomfortable and perhaps irreconcilable alliance? It may be, I thought, that when good and evil were separated they both became equally destructive; that the saint was as appalling and dangerous a figure as the out-and-out rogue. However, when rightness and wrongness were combined in the right proportions, just so, like whiskey and sweet vermouth, that was what constructed the classic Manhattan cocktail of the human animal (yes, with a splash of bitters and a rub of orange peel, and you can allegorize those elements as you please, and the rocks in the glass as well). But I had never known what to make of this yin-and-yang notion. Maybe the union of opposites to form nature was just what human beings told themselves to rationalise away their imperfections. Maybe it was just too neat, and the truth was that evil deeds trumped good ones. It didn’t matter, for example, that Hitler was kind to dogs. ~ Salman Rushdie, The Golden House
At once the third eyes in our pineal glands opened and we understood the secrets of the world
Already high on life, we broke open the long-preserved pack of Afghan Moon and inhaled. At once the third eyes in our pineal glands opened as my father had said they would and we understood the secrets of the world. We saw that the world was neither meaningless nor absurd, that in fact it had profound meaning and form, but that form and meaning had been hidden from us until now, concealed in the hieroglyphics and esoterica of power, because it was in the interests of the masters of of the world to hide meaning from all but the illuminated. We understood also that it was up to us to save the planet and that the force that would save the planet was love. … Tonight was for love, said the Afghan Moon, tonight was for the celebration of living bodies and for saying farewell to the lost bodies of departed loved ones, but after the sun rose in the morning, there would be no time to lose. ~ Salman Rushdie, The Golden House
But making money is art, and working is art - and good business is the best art
Business art is the step that comes after art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business. They’d say “money is bad” and “working is bad”. But making money is art, and working is art - and good business is the best art. ~ Andy Warhol, The Andy Warhol Diaries
Life’s too short to play small with your talents
Life’s too short to play small with your talents. You were born into the opportunity as well as the responsibility to become legendary. You’ve been built to achieve master-work level projects, designed to realise unusually important pursuits and constructed to be a force for good on this tiny planet. You have it in you to reclaim sovereignty over your primal greatness in a civilisation that has become fairly uncivilised. To restore your nobility in a global community where the majority shops for nice shoes and acquires expensive things yet rarely invests in a better self. Your personal leadership requires — no, demands — that you stop being a cyber-zombie relentlessly attracted to digital services ad restructure your life to model mastery, exemplify decency and relinquish the self-centeredness that keeps good people limited. The great women and men of the world were all givers, not takers. Renounce the common delusion that those who accumulate the most win. Instead, do work that is heroic —that staggers your marketplace by the quality of its originality as well as from the helpfulness it provides. While you do so, my recommendation is that you also create a private life strong in ethics, rich with marvelous beauty, and unyielding when it comes to the protection of your inner peace. This, my friends, is how you soar with the angels. And walk alongside the gods. ~ The Spellbinder | Robin Sharma, The 5am Club
To accept the challenge of the unknown is the only way to grow
Knowledge is certain; the search for personal knowing is very, very hazardous. Nobody can guarantee it. If you ask me if I can guarantee anything, I can only guarantee danger, that much is certain. I can only guarantee you a long adventure with every possibility of going astray and never reaching the goal. But one thing is certain: the very search will help you grow.
I can guarantee only growth. Danger will be there, sacrifice will be there, you will be moving every day into the unknown, into the uncharted, and there will be no map to follow, no guide to follow. Yes, there are millions of dangers and you can go astray and you can get lost, but that is the only way one grows. Insecurity is the only way to grow, to face danger is the only way to grow, to accept the challenge of the unknown is the only way to grow. ~ Osho
We carve out our own identity and possess our own purpose, and yet we also yearn to shed the isolation we feel within the envelope of our skin
What is it that we want? To fully experience our aliveness. To feel in our bodies a streaming, like the rush of a river over stones. To be awake, alert, and responsive in our limbs and sensitive in our fingertips to the textures we touch; to be infused with our own whispering current of wind; to feel as if our outer and inner reality is congruent and that our efforts are rewarded by a sense of satisfaction. We carve out our own identity and possess our own purpose, and yet we also yearn to shed the isolation we feel within the envelope of our skin. We desire union. We aspire to have our private lives nestle within the valley of a public world that we can affirm. We long to feel connected with each other. Like the woods that harbor wild creatures, creekbeds, and fertile pastures that rest upon a mound of earth that spreads into a vast range of mountains and plains-we want to feel a part of a community that spills into and becomes part of a larger universe. We want to be able to embrace and be embraced. We want to live the life of our bodies and want our bodies to permit us to fully live our lives. ~ Harriet Beinfeld, Between Heaven and Earth - A guide to Chinese Medicine
To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other.
Our lives are not our own. we are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths. To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other.
The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds, that go and impressionate themselves throughout all time. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday I believed that I would never have done what I did today.
These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. At each point of intersection, each encounter suggests a new potential direction. ~ Cloud Atlas
Those who are free dance
Dancing transforms everything, demands everything, and judges no one. Those who are free dance, even if they find themselves in a cell or a wheelchair, because dancing is not the mere repetition of certain movements, it’s a conversation with a Being greater and more powerful than everyone and everything. To dance is to use a language beyond selfishness and fear. ~ Paulo Coelho, Hippie
Human beings do not grow in perfect symmetry
Human beings do not grow in perfect symmetry. They oscillate, expand, contract, back track, arrest themselves, retrogress, mobilize, atrophy in part, proceed erratically according to experience and traumas. Some aspects of the personality mature, others do not. Some live in the past, some in the present. Some people are futuristic characters, some are cubistic, some are hard-edged, some geometric, some abstract, some impressionistic, some surrealistic! Some of their insights remain relative, and we can no longer think of a character as good or bad, but a combination of characteristics which vary according to relationship and the point in time. We know now that we are composites in reality, collages of our fathers and mothers, of what we read, of television influences and films, of friends and associates, and we know we often play roles quite removed from our genuine selves. ~ Anaïs Nin, The Novel of the Future
And so I practice turning people into trees
When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, ‘You’re too this, or I’m too this.’ That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are. ~ Ram Dass
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. ~ John Lennon