lack of awareness

Happiness is pervasive.
It is everywhere… When we are unhappy it is because something is covering our minds and we are not able to be aware of happiness. When the difficulty is past we find happiness again.
It is not that happiness is all around us. That is not it at all. It is not this or that or in this or that.
It is an abstract thing.
Happiness is unattached. Always the same. It does not appear and disappear. It is not sometimes more and sometimes less. It is our awareness of happiness that goes up and down.
Happiness is our real condition.
It is reality.
It is life.

Agnes Martin

believe me, i've tried

She's gonna learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face, wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that Wonder-woman isn't coming, I'll make sure she knows she doesn't have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I've tried.

Point B, Sarah Kay

spring

life as ongoing

Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments — an inability to accept life as ongoing.

Sarah Manguso

grow from the inside out

the people who help us grow toward true self offer unconditional love, neither judging us to be deficient nor trying to force us to change but accepting us exactly as we are. and yet this unconditional love does not lead us to rest on our laurels. instead, it surrounds us with a charged force field that makes us want to grow from the inside out — a force field that is safe enough to take the risks and endure the failures that growth requires.

by parker j. palmer

the whole

i want love to be simple. i want to trust without thinking. i want to be generous with my affection and patience and love unconditionally. it is easier to love a person with their flaws than to weed through them. i want to love the whole person, not parts; and this is how i want to be loved.


chasing down the dawn, jewel kilcher