Close and Open Like a Hinge

I wanted
The past to go away, I wanted
To leave it, like another country; I wanted
My life to close, and open
Like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
Where it falls
Down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
To hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,
Whoever I was, I was

Alive
For a little while.

…mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
Or mean,
For a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
Swim through the fires to stay in
This world.”

― Mary Oliver

Being Passive

"“The purgatory of passivity is resentment. It will form the way a puddle does, drop by drop. Then, as the drops accumulate, the puddle of resentment becomes a stream.”
-Barbara Pachter

Participate Relentlessly

"You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings."

Elizabeth Gilbert

Benevolent Witness

"There's no pain on earth that doesn't crave a benevolent witness."

Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

Give up control and trust the soil

"It’s more about trusting your own instincts — recognizing that, even in your messiness, you are perfectly made, that you have these seeds, these gifts, that must be planted and trusted.

In many ways, eradicating self-doubt is the pathway to a deeper humility. When you don’t doubt the seed you have planted, you, in a sense, give up control. You admit how little you have to do with the fruits of your own labor. It’s the water and the air and the photosynthesis and maybe, depending on your belief system, it’s an inexplicable, jaw-dropping miracle. You trust that your biggest gifts may actually conspire to exist even without your careful cultivation, that perhaps they will have an even greater chance of appearing if you don’t obsess over them.

I’m going to try to heed Alonzo’s call. I’m going to try to forget time, like Maya. I’m going to try to trust the soil, like Louise. I’m going to give up thinking that I can micromanage miracles — big or small."

Courtney Martin, On Being

Too many considerations

"The singing intent dies a slow death. Our most basic fear is intellectualized and called “revision.” This is not watering the seed; it is poisoning the dirt with too many considerations. "

Courtney Martin, On Being

Keep the seed underground

“Self-doubt has to be eradicated. If you plant a seed, you don’t dig it up to see if it’s growing. You plant it. You believe in it. You nurture it. You go with it.”

Alonzo King interview, via OnBeing

Bloom Anyway

"The sunset doesn't care if we watch it or not. It will keep on being beautiful, even if no one bothers to look at it."

Gene Amole

Walk Away and Grow

"You cannot seek water from the one who drained your seas, and you cannot build a home for your worth inside another being. The medicine is when you return to yourself, where you will remember your strength, reclaim your rhythm and write your new song."

-Victoria Erickson

March

"And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her."

JRR Tolkien

Dirt Blooms

"When a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower."

Alexander Den Heijer

Pay Attention to

"Pay attention to what you pay attention to."

-Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Great Hopes

"My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return."

-Maya Angelou

Women March

"There is no noise as powerful as the sound of the marching feet of a determined people."

-MLK JR.

Simply Words

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."

Jack Kerouac

Abundance

"Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours."

CS Lewis

Forever

Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes just one second."

-Lewis Carrol

Another Feminism

"I realized beauty becomes a form of keeping our woulds alive and that if I had mistaken feminism with taking away our beauty then that is my loss. That's part of my feminism now. To ingrain my womanhood, my sexuality, my beauty, my interest in fashion. Whatever I want. That's how I shifted my interpretation of what feminism should be like. Not to be like any man, but to be myself. That's what feminism is."

-Zainab Salbi

Let the Mud Be

"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone."

-Alan Watts

I fell in love the way....

"I fell in love the way I fall asleep: slowly, while reliving every embarrassing thing I've ever done and worrying about things I can't control."

-Emery Lord