Category: Philosophy

Life lasts so briefly, like free theatre in the park — glorious and tedious; full of wonder and often hard to understand

Life lasts so briefly, like free theatre in the park — glorious and tedious; full of wonder and often hard to understand

Jung wrote that when we look outside ourselves, we dream. When we look inside, we wake up. Why would you walk out of a lovely dream, or Plato’s cave, into real life?

One answer is that life lasts so briefly, like free theatre in the park — glorious and tedious; full of wonder and often hard to understand, but right before our very eyes, and capable of rousing us, awakening us to life, to the brightest green and very real grass, the mess, the sky, the limbo. This is the great unexpected promise, that we can choose now, no matter our current condition. But we can’t choose it for anyone else.

Anne Lamott, from “Almost Everything – Notes on Hope” P. 46
Not one single person in history has gotten an alcoholic sober

Not one single person in history has gotten an alcoholic sober

There is almost nothing outside you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you are waiting for a donor organ

You can’t buy, achieve, or date serenity. Peace of mind is an inside job, unrelated to fame, fortune, or whether your partner loves you. Horribly, what that means is that it is also an inside job for the few people you love most desperately in the world. We cannot arrange lasting safety or happiness for our most beloved people. They have to find their own ways, their own answers.

Not one single person in history has gotten an alcoholic sober. (Maybe you’ll be the first. But — and I say this with love — I doubt it.) If it is someone else’s problem, you probably don’t have the solution.

Anne Lamott, from “Almost Everything – Notes on Hope” P. 35
It’s always time we run out of…

It’s always time we run out of…

We meant to save for our retirement… We meant to stop eating so much… We meant to spend more time with our parents when they were still alive, or more time with our children when they were still little.

But we didn’t have enough time. We ran out of it.

It’s always time, not money. The richest person in the world runs out of time, just like we do.

We meant to say something to someone we cared about… but time got away from us.

We would have… we should have… we could have… But each time, we ran out of time.

…

Time is what gets us all. We run out of it. Everyone is running out of time. And it can’t be stretched. It can’t be printed. It can’t be saved up, stitched up, or revved up.

It waits for nobody and no thing. And all we are left with are regrets.

We wish we had used our time better. We wish we had begun saving for our retirement earlier. We wish we had taken the time to learn Spanish or how to play the piano…”

— Bill Bonner