An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. If you are sulky, or surly, or cynical, or depressed, or superior, or frightened half out of your wits, your life cannot possibly be worth living. Suffering makes you feel safe because you know it so well. But imagining what might happen if one’s circumstances were different is the only sure route to madness.
Worrying is an attempt to exert control over the future by thinking about it. The essential is constantly threatened by the insignificant. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is. The catastrophe we think will happen has in fact already happened. We have little option but to be relentlessly on our own side.
People are drawn to the easy and to the easiest side of the easy, but it is clear that we must hold ourselves to the difficult. Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health. The warrior’s journey is often extremely inconvenient. If you are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who you are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn’t begun.
Don’t rush a divorce, sickness, or other hardship – they’re intended to make you stronger. These may not be the lessons you want to learn, but they may be more valuable than anything you could concoct, to be undefended against love is to live more fully. If you don’t realize that you are walking on coals and running the gauntlet and surviving the wilderness in quest of a vision—all within the confines of a simple human relationship—you could be undone by it.
One of the things we have to realize is that despair is part of the process. With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all. Unless a person is willing to be terminally, frantically earnest, all hope is lost.
We shouldn’t give up when we are at the lowest. It isn’t for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security. If you have to be lonely to be free, learn how to tolerate a little bit of loneliness. You need to feel your own essence—who you are when you are not acknowledged and supported by someone else.
Don’t let your dreams ruin your life. The downfall of a lot of players who are otherwise gifted is thinking about failure. Surrender to your mediocrity. Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity.
Every day of our lives, we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference. Thought is the real causative force in life, and there is no other. Enlightenment heals forward and backward. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin. The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. You have been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender. Give up waiting. The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. It was nature’s intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life: every individual can make himself happy. Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.
Have the courage to transform yourself, my darling. Life tends to go better for those who have the courage to trust others. The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. Life is short and experiences with remarkable people are rare. Once you’ve heard the sound of that distant music, you’re deaf to everything else.
Quote: I don’t know what God is, but in my wildest dreams, I would never conceive of God, or a god, as being like a modern human being in a materialistic society. – Jane Goodall, Surviving Progress
Song accompaniment: Brandy Clark, Dear Insecurity
Artwork: The Art of Seth
Endnotes are in the same order as the sentences they refer to.
Helen Schuman, A Course in Miracles (Mill Valley, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1976), Workbook for Students, Introduction, Section I.
Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1948), 42.
Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (San Rafael: Amber-Allen Publishing, 1997).
Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow (New York: Viking, 2016).
Barbara Fredrickson, Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the Upward Spiral That Will Change Your Life (New York: Crown Publishers, 2009).
Char, René. This quote is from René Char, a French poet and writer.
Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 23.
Donald Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock Publications, 1971).
Alain de Botton, The Course of Love (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016).
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, translated by M.D. Herter Norton (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1934), 27.
Carl Jung, “The Transcendent Function,” in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 8, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), par. 143.
Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2002).
Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000), 54.
Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience (Port Washington, NY: A Better Today Publishing, 2013).
Brian Brett, Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 2009).
Moore, Thomas. Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ordeals (p. 124). Penguin Publishing Group, 2004.
Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own: Stories from My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015).
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, translated by Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956).
Carr, David. The Night of the Gun. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.
Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own: Stories from My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015).
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (New York: Pantheon Books, 1955), 20.
Troubadours: Carole King / James Taylor & The Rise of the Singer-Songwriter, directed by Morgan Neville (2011).
Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997).
Attributed to Cheryl Strayed. Exact source unknown.
Hamm, Mia. Philosophy on sports and performance.
Attributed to Cheryl Strayed. Exact source unknown.
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1994), 28.
2 Timothy 1:7, New King James Version.
Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 375
Mignon McLaughlin, The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook (New York: Signet, 1981)
Emmet Fox, The Mental Equivalent: The Secret of Demonstration (New York: Harper & Row, 1943)
Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (New York: Bantam Books, 1992).
Steve Jobs, “Commencement Address at Stanford University, June 12, 2005,” Stanford Report (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2005)
James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1987)
Camus, Albert. The Rebel. New York: Vintage Books, 1951.
Lao Tzu. Teachings on change and transformation.
Lao Tzu. Teachings on change and transformation.
Rumi, The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 102.
Rumi, The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 102.
Rumi, The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 102.
Tolle, Eckhart. Teachings on living in the present moment and letting go of waiting as a state of mind.
Dr. Gordon Livingston, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now (New York: Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2004)
Seneca, “On the Happy Life” in Letters from a Stoic (New York: Penguin Classics, 1969), Letter 59.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Philosophical emphasis on the importance of maintaining one’s desire for progress and personal growth.
Lispector, Clarice. Água Viva. Rio de Janeiro: Editora do Autor, 1973.
Gottman, John. Research on relationships and trust.
Angelou, Maya. Letter to My Daughter. New York: Random House, 2008.
Diane Keaton, Then Again (New York: Random House, 2011), 256.
Sarah Dessen, Just Listen (New York: Viking, 2006), 193.
Read next:
100 Thoughts That Change the Way You Feel