Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering.*
Susan Cain

I think that the initial values that the brain is equipped with are pain and discomfort.**
Ryunosuke Koike

Yesterday,
I found myself encouraging someone to connect with
who they already are.
None of us can be someone else, but
we each can be more ourselves.
Perhaps counterintuitively,
This takes place as we consider how we can serve others,
Even surprising ourselves at what we can bring that helps another,
As Viktor Frankl foresaw for each of us
willing to take this journey:
Self-actualisation is possible
only as a side-effect of
self-transcendence.^
I do not know if it is possible for
all pain and comfort to be so redeemed,
But for many,
It has helped forge their distinct voice,
Enabling the most beautiful “art”:
It’s not that pain equals art.
It’s that creativity has the power to look pain in the eye,
and to decide to turn it into something better.*
Which sounds a lot like Wallace Stevens
opening my eyes to see how
the power of imagination transforms
the pressure of reality.

*Susan Cain’s Bittersweet;
**Ryunosuke Koike’s The Practice of Not Thinking;
^Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self Improvement.

At the same time, nature is pleasantly diverting, in a fashion that lifts our mood without occupying all our mental powers; such positive emotion in turn leads us to think more expansively and open-mindedly. In the space that is thus made available, currently active thoughts can mingle with deep stories of memories, emotions,, and ideas already present in the brain, generating inspired collisions.*
Annie Murphy Paul

*Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind.

An overnight success almost never is. Might as well plan for the journey.*
Seth Godin

Longing for worldly things makes you inert. Longing for Infinity fills you with life. The skill is to bear the pain of longing and move on. True longing brings up spurts of bliss.**
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Called beyond ourselves –
A longing from a great distance rather than
the immediate –
We journey on for many days and years,
Perhaps we never reach the destination we thought to see.
And yet,
The journey contains the richness of moments
only made possible by the persistent longing.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.^

*Seth Godin’s blog: All at once and quite suddenly;
**Susan Cain’s Bittersweet;
^Constantin Cavafy’s Ithaka.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.*
Joseph Campbell

The great law of life is: be yourself. Though the axiom sounds simple, it is often the most difficult task. To be yourself, you have to learn how to become who you were dreamed to be. Each person has a unique destiny.**
John O’Donohue

We don’t make the hero.
It is the greater cause that makes the hero of people who are willing
to find themselves by
losing themselves.

*Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self Improvement;
**John O’Donohue’s Benedictus.

[C]aring is right at the heart of human existence. Sadness is about caring. And the mother of sadness is compassion.*
Dacher Keltner

I love that word treasure. What if we saw ourselves that way. As worthy of treasuring.**
Sam Radford

There’s a four minute video
Made by the Cleveland Clinic that invites us
to step behind the faces we may pass
in hospital corridors without a second thought.
With text appearing to tell us what they are going through,
Concluding with the question:
If you could stand in someone else’s shoes.
Hear what they hear.
Feel what they feel.
Would you treat them differently?
I thought you might like to take a look.

*Susan Cain’s Bittersweet;
**Sam Radford‘s blog: Guard the good treasure trusted to you.

There’s a word in Spanish. … Instead of saying ‘to wake up,’ you say recordarse, that is, to record yourself, to remember yourself. … Every morning I get that feeling because I am more or less nonexistent.  Then when I wake up, I always feel I’m being let down.  Because, well, here I am.  Here’s the same old stupid game going on.  I have to be somebody.  I have to be exactly that somebody.*
Jorge Luis Borges

*From Lewis Hyde’s A Primer for Forgetting.

Sanctuary is a word derived from the Latin sanctuarium, which is, like most words ending in -arium, a container for keeping something in – in this case holy things or perhaps cherished people (sanctae/sancti).*

Cherished people like you.

*Wikipedia: Sanctuary.

Given the uniqueness of each of us, it should not be surprising that one of the greatest challenges is to inhabit your own individuality and to discover which life-form best expresses it.*
John O’Donohue

You cannot be a hero unless you are prepare everything; there is no ascent to the heights without a prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death.**
Karen Armstrong

I have mentioned the five elemental truths^
on a few occasions recently,
And this morning found myself contemplating their opposites,
Perhaps,
Life should be fun;
You’re special;
Live your life your way;
Don’t give up control;
Don’t think about death.
The hero, though, is born
by completing the truths^ in
gritty yet elegant ways, until
they have the power to let go and
let come.
This won’t read like a hero to many,
And that’s the thing –
Heroes don’t look like we expect them to,
They’re just ordinary people trying to live their lives
for others.

The boundary lines have fallen for me
in pleasant places;
I have a goodly heritage.^^

*John O’Donohue’s Benedictus;
**Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth;
^Life is hard; You’re not as special as you think; Your life is not about you; You’re to in control; You’re going to die;
^^Psalm 16:6)