Stillness in Confidence

"Beautiful things don't ask for attention."

-James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Self Love

"Self-love is misunderstood because people think it’s about buying yourself flowers or treating yourself to the spa once in a while. Self-love is a noun, not a verb. It’s a state of being, not doing. It’s a passive state, not an active one. That’s why 100 bubble baths won’t change how you feel about yourself. We organically acquiesce into self-love only after we reach self-acceptance, which means approving of ourselves exactly as we are with zero judgments. To get to that place, we must first do the work of self-forgiveness.

Think about it. You can't love someone if you don't fully accept them, and you certainly can’t accept them if you hold a grudge against them. That’s why the doing part of self-love, the active work to reach it, actually lies in self-forgiveness; forgiving yourself for not being a size two, the perfect wife/mother, failing at your last diet, not being what your parents wanted you to be, missed opportunities, broken relationships, parenting mistakes, etc. Women are constantly striving to meet the unattainable standards someone else has set for them. When the inevitable failure happens, they turn their judgment inward and subconsciously punish themselves for being less than the ideal. It’s impossible to take loving actions toward yourself when you feel you’ve done so much wrong that you don’t deserve to be happy and at a healthy weight."
- Dr. Habib Sadeghi,  interview

Face It

“Facing it — always facing it — that’s the way to get through." 
— Joseph Conrad 

Head West

"I was headed out down a long bone-white road, straight as a string  and smooth as glass and glittering and wavering in the heat and humming under the tires like a plucked nerve. I was doing seventy-five but I never seemed to catch up with the pool that seemed to be over the road just this side of the horizon. Then, after a while, the sun was in my eyes, for I was driving west. So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving west. For West is where we all plan to go someday. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: 'Flee, all is discovered.' It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go."

Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men, ch. 7

Stories

"The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories."

— Kate Atkinson, Human Croquet 

The Price

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."

— Henry David Thoreau 

My Sacred Luck

"Because if you’re lucky enough to have people in your life that make you happy, that inspire you, that move you, you need to devour each moment you have together because you never know how many of those moments you have left. These people are sacred."

— Katie Kacvinsky, First Comes Love