Consuuuuuuuumerism

"Here's the thing: In the end I believe our life will be characterized by contribution or consumerism, by one or the other, but not by both."

-Allie Marie Smith via Darling Magazine

Light Itself

"I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself."

-Edward Steichen

To Release

"Happiness is not found in things you possess but in what you have the courage to release."

-Nathaniel Hawthorne

Basket Theory

 Jonathan Field's "Three Basket Theory": 

Jonathan pointed out that we all have three general "baskets" in life: 

1 - Our vitality + wellbeing (personal habits)

2 - Our connections to others + source (relationships)

3 - Our contribution (giving back/career)

And here's the insight that changed my whole perspective: 

The MOST filled basket in our lives is always LIMITED by the LEAST filled basket.

When we don't take care of ourselves first (the vitality basket), we are purposely limiting what we will be able to give to the connections + contribution baskets."

via jess lively

Knowledge Rumor

"Knowledge is only rumor, until it lives in the bones."

-Asaro Tribe

Write yourself back

"I lost my voice, and I wrote, and wrote, and wrote myself back.”

- Lina A

Zora!

“She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.”

- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Emily, Always

“…and I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”

- The Letters Of Emily Dickinson (Emily Dickinson)

The Indifferent Middle

“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”

- Sylvia Plath

Gains

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Don't take it personally when I tell you 'NO'. I'm using it on everyone this year."

-Lena Dunham

Write Yourself

"As I started to write myself, I began to read stories differently, harder. Margins were marked with comments, and memorable passages were underlined, then copied down. I wanted to sense what it must have been like to write these words for the first time, so I would type them hesitantly, pretending that they had just come to me. Once, before leaving on vacation, I copied an entire page from an Alice Munro story and left it in my typewriter, hoping a burglar might come upon it and mistake her words for my own."
--David Sedaris

Reaping and Sewing and Harvesting

"The winter solstice is a time to look at seeds you've planted in the previous winter that have come up in the summer.  For this winter solstice, look at those seeds. which ones have you harvested that you want to replant, and which ones do you want to grind up and use as compost?"

...

"We're going to live in this garden, and the interesting thing about this time of year is it's really dark and a time to go inside of ourselves and be quiet. And we can use this dark time like when you plant seeds in the ground. They're also germinating under there, even though it's dark and nothing seems to be happening on the surface. Think about the seeds, the intentions you want to put into the earth and then reap the benefits of them when the light comes back.

-Ana Forrest as told by Sarah Britton here.