Category Archives: Quote

Think of a place…

I considered doing a “Currently” post or something similar, but thought against it because… reasons.  Then I asked myself why I’m back here at all randomly on a Wednesday.  I haven’t picked up a camera in weeks, so I don’t even have any photos to share on a hastily little-thought out post.  Why am I here?  The eternal question.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all existential.  I don’t have the energy for it.  I have been reading a lot of Self-Help books, however. Aren’t they supposed to… oh, I don’t know, make you feel better about things in general?  Here’s some motivation and guidance, now go take on the world and yada yada yada.  Lately they just make me feel kind of shitty and heartfelt rom-coms just… make me sigh.

Realism here.  Most days I don’t feel like I can take on the world. Some days I’m uncertain if I can even take on getting out of bed or being a parent or a friend or hell, I’m not sure I could even take on being a house cat and their lives aren’t exactly challenging, you know?

Maybe it’s winter… maybe it’s chemical… maybe it’s the stars.  I just figured I’d have shit figured out by the time I was 35 and not as though I’m floundering in the deep end of the pool waiting for a life preserver that simply isn’t there.

It’s days like this that I dream of the mountains.

You know those exercises where you go to a happy place in your mind? You imagine someplace that brings you peace and grounds you.  Mine used to be a field of sunflowers (sometimes it still is) but when I’m contemplating the big stuff, I go to where I feel safe and secure… up near the tree-line.  I picture all of my favorite places in the mountains that we went to when I was younger. I hear a pounding waterfall and rushing creek and feel the icy cold spray that makes your skin ache.  I run to the edge of a mountain and feel the pull of the earth as it warns me not to get too close.  I feel the wind wrap itself around me and can just hear the sound of marmots and other small critters scrambling over rocky crags. I close my eyes and sit in quiet solitude and feel at peace.

Words to Live By

A new year, a new beginning, blah blah blah.  Really, 2015 feels no different so far than 2014, and I don’t plan on making any resolutions, but I do have a few goals for the year.  I’ve seen other people choose words as a theme for their year, but instead I thought I might choose a good quote for the year.  However, I had a really hard time choosing and narrowing one down.  Making decisions is my least favorite thing. So, instead I’m going to share the list that will serve as the inspiration for my 2015, and there is a theme at the very least.  I want to make this year a great year.  I want to read more, I want to laugh more, I want to be mindful of the present and I want to make it all count. Good and bad, I want to experience my life rather than just hurrying through the days.

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“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Where there is love there is life.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Life is to be enjoyed, not endured”
― Gordon B. Hinckley

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
― E.E. Cummings

“The past has no power over the present moment.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always … so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

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Siblings.

It was a lovely long weekend with a bit more rain than I would have liked, but we still managed to be productive and have fun.  That being said, I have photos and other things to sort through and organize, so no time to really write a lot. One thing, has become quite clear, though. Having two kiddos close in age has gotten easier and easier.  I know they won’t always get along as well as they do now (Enzo gets a little irritated at how grabby his baby sister is), but I can dream, right?

Our brothers and sisters are there with us from the dawn of our personal stories to the inevitable dusk. – Susan Scarf Merrell

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To the outside world, we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. – Clara Ortega

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If you want to do really important things in life and big things in life, you can’t do anything by yourself. And your best teams are your friends and your siblings.

Deepak Chopra

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18 Days!!

I’m so excited to become a Mrs.!!
On that note, I’m going to leave you with romantic, sappy poetry. 🙂
SONNET LXIX
~ By Pablo Neruda
Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
without you moving, slicing the noon
like a blue flower, without you walking
later through the fog and the cobbles,
without the light you carry in your hand,
golden, which maybe others will not see,
which maybe no one knew was growing
like the red beginnings of a rose.
In short, without your presence: without your coming
suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:
since then I am because you are,
since then you are, I am, we are,
and through love I will be, you will be, we’ll be.

 

The Invitation
~by Oriah
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the center of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.
It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the center of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

Lovely Quote on Love, Marriage

Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.
– Louis de Bernieres
 
I would say our roots are definitely entwined.