Quote of the day/season

It is not our job to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves
Like the trees, and be born again,
Drawing up from the great roots.

- Robert Bly

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day (Thanks, I Needed That edition)

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

–The Talmud

(via A Mindful Life)

Quote of the day

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

- T. S. Eliot
journal of a nobody

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day

Happiness is accepting and choosing life, not just submitting grudgingly to it. It comes when we choose to be who we are; to be ourselves, at this present moment of our lives; we choose life as it is, with all its joys, pain, and conflicts. Happiness is living and seeking the truth, together with others in community, and assuming responsibility for our lives and the lives of others. It is accepting the fact that we are not infinite but can enter into a personal relationship with the Infinite, discovering the universal truth and justice that transcends all cultures: each person is unique and sacred. We are not just seeking to be what others want us to be or to conform to the expectations of family, friends, or local ways of being. We have chosen to be who we are, with all that is beautiful and broken in us. We do not slip away from life and live in a world of illusions, dreams, or nightmares. We become present to reality and to life so that we are free to live according to our personal conscience, our sacred sanctuary, where love resides within us and we see others as they are in the depth of their being. We are not letting the light of life within us be crushed, and we are not crushing it in others. On the contrary, all we want is for the light of others to shine.

- Jean Vanier
Essential Writings
In a Dark Time

(via whiskey river)

Ze Frank says

This manic style of video may or may not be for you, but I love Ze's notion of a finishing stamp, which somehow combines the notions of self-actualization with the idea that You Have to Ship (which could itself be put better if I were less tired). Lots of good bits in that 3-minute package!

Update: man, if you're feeling a little bleak, watch this Chase the Happy video! I loves me some silly!!

Quote of the day

Let me not think of my work only as a stepping stone to something else, and if it is, let me become fascinated by the shape of the stone.

- Ze Frank *

Quote of the day

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

- Ted Hughes

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

- Carlos Castaneda

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day

Life is a garden,
not a road
we enter and exit
through the same gate
wandering,
where we go matters less
than what we notice

- Bokonon
(muse of Kurt Vonnegut)

(via whiskey river)

Mr. Rogers

Speck was a little under the weather recently, and I took the opportunity to show her her first episodes of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. She was under the impression that she wouldn't like them (having seen some documentary footage about him, maybe?), but she was totally engrossed, from the first shoe-change to the bonus-materials tour of a construction paper factory, and eager to see them again.

For me, the experience was less of recall from my own childhood -- honestly, who remembers anything specific from age 4? -- than of an overwhelming wave of appreciation for this man and his approach to children, his understanding of their questions about the world, and his ability to talk to them right out of the television in a way that made them want to answer back and care about their friendship with him. It was all I could do to not openly weep right there on the couch, and this little exchange of letters allowed me to do it just now at the office instead. What a delicate appreciation he had of the people he was addressing, and a gentle way of giving them a gift from a distance.

Thanks, Mr. Rogers, for all the time you took making good things in this world, and for the rare devotion to focus on little kids as people for so many years. A higher being in a sense that many religious traditions would aspire to...

(via Medley on Twitter)

Edit: idiotic to write about Rogers without linking to this profile, about which I can only say, Holy crap!

(via kottke)

Thought for the day

The only thing that is real is that we have six roots within us. Three roots of good and three roots of evil. The latter are greed, hate and delusion, but we also have their opposites: generosity, love and wisdom. Take an interest in this matter. If one investigates this and doesn't get anxious about it, then one can easily accept these six roots in everybody. No difficulty at all, when one has seen them in oneself. They are the underlying roots of everyone's behavior. Then we can look at ourselves a little more realistically, namely not blaming ourselves for the unwholesome roots, not patting ourselves on the back for the wholesome ones, but rather accepting their existence within us. We can also accept others more clear-sightedly and have a much easier time relating to them. We will not suffer from disappointments and we won't blame, because we won't live in a world where only black or white exists. Such a world doesn't exist.

- Ayya Khema

(via whiskey river)

Poem of the day

Questions Before Dark

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun's midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?

- Jeanne Lohmann
The Light of Invisible Bodies
beyond the fields we know

(via whiskey river)

Link dump: We can all use some cheery distraction edition

Informative and interesting:

• Zombie Marie Curie shares her wisdom (via xkcd): "You don't become great by trying to become great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process."
  
  
• Bad Job Market: Why the Media Is Always Wrong About the Value of a College Degree (it's always good, even if graduates sometimes end up tending bar)
  
  
• Cowboys and Pit Crews -- more from Atul Gwande on how the culture of medicine needs to be changed before we can get to less cost and better outcomes
  
  
• Tattoo Tracks Sodium and Glucose via an iPhone -- technology could allow noninvasive monitoring of many health conditions
  
  
• Pythagoras Solar Turns Windows Into Panels Of Energy -- imagine tall buildings with full solar panel coverage!
  
  
• Soda bottles become electricity-less “light bulbs” for the poor -- no electricity required during the day!
  
  
• Less transformative, but still inspiring: 50 creations from 50 pieces of Lego!
  
  
• Behind N.Y. Gay Marriage, an Unlikely Mix of Forces -- how that political reality came to be
  
  
• Obama Administration Reaches A Compromise On Fuel Economy Proposal -- recently bailed-out car companies get behind major improvements in mileage! yay!
  
  
• The medium chill -- getting off the aspirational treadmill and enjoying the life you have

Hilarious:

• The real George Lucas has been imprisoned for 20 years while an impostor ran amok, making prequels (video "trailer")
  
  
• You gotta love that the CDC has a guide on surviving a Zombie Apocalypse!
  
  
• Muffin Films short silly bits, if you need some surreality...
  
  
• Define the Ratio of People to Cake -- a cranky journalist answers a collection of really strange interview questions
  
  
• How The BET Awards Changed My Life (by capturing the WTF face that summarizes our times)
  
  
• Plot Device -- a truly inspired little musing on what happens when plot twists get the upper hand on an afternoon
  
  
• Neil Patrick Harris' 2011 Tony Awards Opening Number for anybody who missed it -- Broadway's not just for gays anymore!!
  
  
• The Invaders Are Here! -- kitten versus apples; who will win?

Summer fun/try at home:

• What’s Scrabble When You Can Play Novelist? -- how to turn a heap of mindless summer reading into a fun party game
  
  
• Just what we've all been needing: a Make Everything Ok button!!

(a cheery toddler lunch by A Mindful Life!)

Quote of the day

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

- David Whyte
Sweet Darkness
The House of Belonging

(via whiskey river)

Have some fun this weekend!

Whether success or failure: the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

- May Sarton
Twi Chi

(via whiskey river)

Poem of the day

You, as you are, you're just right.
Your parents, your children, your daughter-in-law, your grandchildren,
they are, all for you, just right.

Happiness, unhappiness, joy and even sorrow,
for you, they are just right.

The life that you tread is neither good nor bad.
For you, it is just right.
Whether you go to hell or to the Pure Land,
wherever you go is just right.

Nothing to boast about, nothing to feel bad about,
nothing above, nothing below.

Even the day and month that you die,
even they are just right.

- fragment of a Shin Buddhist poem in Taitetsu Unno's book,
River of Fire, River of Water

(via whiskey river)

When logic and selflessness meet

This is pretty touching: some elderly Japanese former engineers have volunteered to clean up the contaminated nuclear reactor, sparing the futures of the young people who would otherwise do the work. I can hardly begin to respond to this...

Quotes of the day (aging-related)

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

- Louise Erdrich

I have learned to be happy where I am. I have learned that locked within the moments of each day are all the joys, the peace, the fibers of the cloth we call life. The meaning is in the moment. There is no other way to find it. You feel what you allow yourself to feel, each and every moment of the day.

- Russ Berrie

You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.

- Borges

(via whiskey river)

Poem of the day

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

- Louise Erdrich
Original Fire: Selected and New Poems

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day

Now winter, the winter I am writing about, begins to ease. And what, if anything, has been determined, selected, nailed down? This is the lesson of age – events pass, things change, trauma fades, good fortune rises, fades, rises again but different. Whereas what happens when one is twenty, as I remember it, happens forever. I have not been twenty for a long time! The sun rolls toward the north and I feel, gratefully, its brightness flaming up once more. Somewhere in the world the misery we can do nothing about yet goes on.

- Mary Oliver

(via whiskey river)