To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. The soul has an absolute, unforgiving need for regular excursions into enchantment.
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most. The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are. One of the most powerful forces in human nature is the need to stay consistent with how we define ourselves. We have a responsibility to live in the moment and to give ourselves wholly to it.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. The most common form of despair is not being who you are. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. The soul cannot be understood by intellect alone; it needs the mystic, the poet, the lover, and the madman to see the face of God within it.
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. You are the creator of your own destiny. Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change. The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
The only journey is the one within. The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts—that is where the battle should be fought. The more you become aware of yourself, the more God emerges from within you. The quieter you become, the more you can hear. The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Your silence will not protect you. The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.
God enters by a private door into every individual. We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exemplars of virtuous behavior. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. It is not down on any map; true places never are.
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. We have art in order not to die of the truth. Do not depend on the hope of results, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all.
It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable. You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. There is in all visible things a hidden wholeness.
The true Gate is narrow and the real Way straight. In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take.
Song Accompaniment: Leon Bridges, River
Artwork: The Art of Seth
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Despair Is The Breakthrough, An Essay Made Of Quotes
Endnotes are in the same order as the sentences they refer to.
[i] Wilde, Oscar. 2003. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. New York: HarperCollins.
[ii] Wilde, Oscar. 2003. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. New York: HarperCollins.
[iii] Moore, Thomas. 1992. Care of the Soul. New York: HarperCollins.
[iv] Campbell, Joseph. 2004. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[v] Picasso, Pablo. 1989. Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art
[vi] Picasso, Pablo. 1989. Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art
[vii] Rumi, Jalaluddin. 2004. The Essential Rumi. San Francisco: HarperOne.
[viii] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1810. Theory of Colours. London: John Murray.
[ix] Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. 1992. Dhammapada. London: Penguin Classics.
[x] Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. 1992. Dhammapada. London: Penguin Classics.
[xi] Morgan, J.P. 1933. An Age of Character: The Early Years of J.P. Morgan. New York: Knopf.
[xii] Robbins, Tony. 1991. Unlimited Power. New York: Simon & Schuster.
[xiii] Merton, Thomas. 1955. No Man Is an Island. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
[xiv] Kierkegaard, Søren. 1844. The Concept of Anxiety. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel.
[xv] Gide, André. 1926. The Counterfeiters. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
[xvi] Kierkegaard, Søren. 1980. The Sickness Unto Death. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[xvii] Jobs, Steve. 2011. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. New York: Simon & Schuster.
[xviii] Hillman, James. 1975. Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row.
[xix] Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 2003. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: Modern Library.
[xx] Vivekananda, Swami. 2007. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama.
[xxi] Rohn, Jim. 1996. The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle. Southlake: Nightingale Conant.)
[xxii] Eliot, George. 1861. The Mill on the Floss. London: William Blackwood and Sons.
[xxiii] Robbins, Tony. 2001. Awaken the Giant Within. New York: Simon & Schuster.
[xxiv] Montaigne, Michel de. 1993. The Complete Essays. London: Penguin Classics.
[xxv] Rilke, Rainer Maria. 1986. Letters to a Young Poet. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
[xxvi] Gandhi, Mahatma. 2004. The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas. New York: Vintage Books.
[xxvii] Jung, Carl. 1989. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.
[xxviii] Dass, Ram. 1971. Be Here Now. San Francisco: HarperOne.
[xxix] Rumi, Jalaluddin. 2004. The Essential Rumi. San Francisco: HarperOne.
[xxx] Rumi, Jalaluddin. 2004. The Essential Rumi. San Francisco: HarperOne.
[xxxi] King, Martin Luther Jr. 1986. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco: HarperOne.
[xxxii] Angelou, Maya. 1984. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House.
[xxxiii] Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider. Berkeley: Crossing Press.
[xxxiv] Merton, Thomas. 1948. The Seven Storey Mountain. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company.
[xxxv] Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1844. Essays: Second Series. Boston: James Munroe and Company.
[xxxvi] Hillman, James. 1996. The Soul’s Code. New York: Random House.
[xxxvii] Hillman, James. 1996. The Soul’s Code. New York: Random House.
[xxxviii] Melville, Herman. 1851. Moby-Dick. New York: Harper & Brothers.
[xxxix] Eliot, T.S. 1963. Collected Poems, 1909-1962. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
[xl] Proverb. Origin unknown, often referenced in Chinese wisdom literature.
[xli] Proverb. Origin unknown, often referenced in Chinese wisdom literature.
[xlii] Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967. The Birth of Tragedy. New York: Vintage Books.
[xliii] Merton, Thomas. 1979. The Nonviolent Alternative. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
[xliv] Seneca. 2008. Letters from a Stoic. London: Penguin Classics.
[xlv] Merton, Thomas. 1965. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. New York: Doubleday.
[xlvi] Merton, Thomas. 1965. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. New York: Doubleday.
[xlvii] Merton, Thomas. 1965. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. New York: Doubleday.
[xlviii] Fox, Emmet. 1932. Getting Results By Prayer. DeVorss Publications.
[xlix] Carroll, Lewis. 2004. The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll. London: Penguin Classics.