Up: [[Calling]] > [!Orbit] Natalie Babbitt in *Tuck Everlasting* > Do not fear death, but rather the unlived life. You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live. > [!Orbit] Fyodor Dostoyevsky > The mystery of human existence lies not in just in staying alive, but in finding something to live for. > [!Orbit] Guatama Buddha > Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it. > [!Orbit] Margaret Atwood > What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. > [!Orbit] Denis Diderot > Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things. > [!Orbit] Michael Nolan > There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue these. > [!Orbit] [[Tama Kieves]] in email newsletter, Sept. 18, 2018 > Don’t try to figure out your whole precious life. It will drive you mad — and it’s useless. Listen within for one next incremental step or focus. There is always a next move. That’s how you lean into, create and emobdy a wildly inspired life. Today I’m open to a shift, step, or awakening. > [!Orbit] Frederick Buchner > Your vocation is that place where your deep gladness meets the world’s great hunger. > [!Orbit] William Danforth > I dare you, while there is still time, to have a magnificent obsession. > [!Orbit] Po Bronson in *What Should I Do with my Life?* > There’s a difference between something that stimulates you for a year and something you can be passionate about for ten years. What is the difference? One thing is not ten times more stimulating than the other. The difference is whether your heart’s in it. You don’t find your purpose above the neck. If you use your brain to solve this problem, you’ll usually end up with an answer that only makes your brain happy. (p. 49) > [!Orbit] Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley > Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. > [!Orbit] George Bernard Shaw > This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. > [!Orbit] Steve Jobs > Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. > [!Orbit] Jiddu Krishnamurti > What you are the world is: And without your transformation there can be no transformation of the world. > [!Orbit] Mark Twain > The two more important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why. > [!Orbit] W.S. Merwin > We are asleep with compasses in our hands. > [!Orbit] William Cowper > Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose. > [!Orbit] Frederick Nietzsche > He who has a why can endure any how. > [!Orbit] Ralph Ellison > When I discover who I am, I’ll be free. > [!Orbit] Antonio Machado > Travellers, there is no path, paths are made by walking. > [!Orbit] [[Joseph Campbell]] in *Pathways to Bliss* > What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There’s nothing you can do that’s more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal; transparent to [[Transcendent Function]] in this way, you will find, live, and become a realization of your own [[personal myth]]. (p. 108) > [!Orbit] Tim O’Reilly > Pursue something so important that even if you fail, the world is better off with you having tried. > [!Orbit] Thomas Jefferson > Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. > [!Orbit] [[Rumi]] > You have a duty to perform. Do anything else, do any number Of things, occupy your time fully. And yet if you do not do this task, All your time will have been wasted. > [!Orbit] Nicholas Lore in *The Pathfinder* > A purpose is an ongoing commitment to a principle that becomes who you are. It is not a belief or a goal to be achieved but a place where you come from. It is not what you do but who are you being. > [!Orbit] [[Rumi]] > Respond to every call that excites your spirit. > [!Orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] > In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted. > [!Orbit] W.H. Auden > The so-called traumatic experience is not an accident, but the opportunity for which the child has been patiently waiting — had it not occurred, it would have found another, equally trivial — in order to find a necessity and direction for its existence, in order that its life may become a serious matter. > [!Orbit] [[James Hillman]] in *The Soul’s Code* > …whatever we are, we could not have been otherwise. There is no regret, no wrong path, no true mistake. The eye of necessity reveals what we do to be only what could have been. (p. 210) > [!Orbit] [[Anne Lamott]] in *Stitches: a handbook on meaning, hope and repair* > When you love something like reading — or drawing or music or nature — it surrounds you with a sense of connection to something great. If you are lucky enough to know this, then your search for meaning involves whatever that Something is. It’s an alchemical blend of affinity and focus that takes us to a place within that feels as close as we ever get to ‘home.’ It’s like pulling into our own train station after a long trip — joy, relief, a pleasant exhaustion. > [!Orbit] Howard Thurman, theologian > Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. > [!orbit] Christopher Morley, writer > There are three ingredients to the good life: learning, earning, and yearning. > [!Orbit] Octavia Butler > Love quiets fear. And a sweet and powerful Positive obsession Blunts pain, Diverts rage, And engages each of us In the greatest The most intense Of our chosen struggles. > [!Orbit] [[Rumi]] > Let the beauty we love be what we do. > There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. > [!Orbit] Martha Graham to her student Agnes de Mille, written in de Mille’s memoir, *Dance to the Piper* > There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, the expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium…and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. > [!orbit] [[Rumi]] > What you seek is seeking you. > [!Orbit] Gabrielle Roth in *Sweat Your Prayers* > We all have the potential to be a full-bodied Bordeaux, but sadly most of us are satisfied being Welch’s grape juice. (p. 41) > [!Orbit] [[David Whyte]] > The antidote to exhaustion isn’t rest. It’s wholeheartedness. > [!Orbit] [[Robertson Davies]] in *Fifth Business* > One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence. > [!orbit] Ursula K. Le Guin in *A Wizard of Earthsea* > The truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing but does only and wholly what he must do.