Sagacity

If you’re not excited about it, it’s not the right path.

"If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are." — Montesquieu

"Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There’s no reason not to follow your heart."

— Steve Jobs

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”

It may be wiser to try to create the place you want to live, rather than to keep trying to find it.

• Frank Bures

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister. Everyone is finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else. Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.” Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important. Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

— Dr. Seuss

Complaining convinces others that you’re not in control.

You’re always one decision away from a totally different life.

How others treat me is their path. How I react is mine.

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

"When one man has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself." — Jacques Cousteau

Your unlimited desires are clouding your peace.

You will receive a body. You may like it or not but it is yours for the entire time you’re on Earth. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called “life.” Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant or stupid. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much as the process as the experiment that ultimately works. A lesson is repeated until it is learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. Then you can go on to the next lesson. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned. “There” is no better than “here.” When your “there” has become “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that is, again, better than “here.” Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need – what you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust. You will forget all this. You can remember whenever you want.

"To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and when the time comes to let it go, to let it go." — A snippet from Mary Oliver's In Blackwater Woods⁠

The world is big and I am small⁠ / I feel the vastness of the sky embracing me⁠ / The sun gently touches my skin⁠ / I am reminded I am still here⁠

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The world is big and I am small⁠ / My body feels the warmth of the water / My eyes closed but I see yellow⁠ / I am not promised any certainty but I am held⁠ / I am still here⁠

“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”

“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” — Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

The Universe will remove people and places from your life, not because you did something wrong to make them leave and not because they have turned their back on you, but because they cannot go to the level that the Universe is taking you to. They will hinder and affect you at your next level because they have already served their purpose in your life. Let those people and places go because the Universe says that greater things are coming your way. The Universe is in charge of protecting you and your highest good. Trust when it decides to re-route and guide you. The Universe knows what it's doing.

- Unknown

"Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world." — Miyamoto Musashi