Well, Hitchens is dead, I've had a recent battle against 'woo,' holiday stirrings and stories, going home, questions about my former Mormonism, slight discussion on if parents' rules for what happens in their house or, separately, what happens in their children's lives. I've also been listening to Christian rock music from a mission cd, Team Jesus, lolz.
With all these things I will maybe make posts (such as the Lady GaGa and Patriarchal blessing posts I've promised for years) but I decided I would do something a little more thoughtful. I have, like, five different journals, and one of them is a word document where I put thoughtful insights or quotes I like, little 'one-liners' as I've dubbed them, but most are not necessarily one simple line of thought. I was wanting to post something meaningful for the holidays before I go home, and I decided this probably would be best. I was reminded about the journal when Heretic, my X, shared another blog that had several good, thought-provoking, and introspective quotes and ideas on a post. Some will most likely appear in this post.
I won't put any quotations or write the sources. I apologize for this, but I never planned on sharing these till I started sharing some of them in conversation and online, when some people thanked me for the thought. Due to this I never wrote down the authors for the quotes that are not mine. Then some of them are also paraphrases. And lastly, a good portion are actually written by me ... for me. So maybe some of you dear readers will appreciate a look into my psyche. I'm sure some can be seen as cheesy, but I hope people will get from this what they will. Take your time, come back if you have to, but please feel free to read them all. Happy Holidays!
So here is the list:
I don’t have to be the one person who feels happy all the time.
When someone has had a loss, do not offer condolences, tell them “I take part in your pain.”
Only a fool takes offense when offense was not given.
Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past will change.
In all things strive to cause no harm.
Do not overlook evil or refrain from administering justice; but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
Question everything, and question with boldness.
Always be learning: from books, friends, and self.
Friends are worth more than opinions.
Always be willing to admit you are or could be wrong right in the middle of the discussion to the other person: not after, alone, to yourself.
If you hurt the ones you love most, but treat strangers cordially, then where is the fissure and how do you cross it?
There are no true second chances, live with purpose and meaning.
If you were to die in a month, would you feel fulfilled? If not then you must motivate yourself to experience more. If never then you must revaluate what you value.
Doubt is a virtue.
Contentment is when you do not have to climb a hill or walk a beach, to travel.
Stop philosophizing about what a good person is and be one.
Asking “why not” can sometimes be as pointless as asking “why.”
You do not want to be the person who dies where no one at the funeral will have anything nice to say about you; treat those closest, by blood and ties, with love and care.
If you know money doesn’t buy people happiness then stop spending so much.
If you feel motivated to help yourself, then help others.
People laugh and smile in groups and in public, and they show no signs of feeling pain. And some may never understand your pain or sorrow, but they can feel compassion and sympathy and these things should not be discarded.
Be careful where you tread, you could be treading on other’s dreams.
Some things may not be the way you want them, but you must make the best of what you have.
Don’t give up, don’t blame others for your failures, don’t pity yourself, never surrender; stand up and fight, believe in yourself, and succeed.
Pay back ten-fold what you have hurt, including yourself, and pay forward any excess happiness you currently hold.
Are you taking away from the world or giving back to it?
A laugh should always be shared, and shared laughter is worth so much more.
You can buy sex, you have persons to share experiences with, you have family already, you have friends who are willing to drop what they are doing and be there for you; all of their love wholly combined is more than you can ever hope to achieve as a single person, and yet you need one single person to love you the same way for you to be happy?
You discover what matters to you most when you lose it. Learn from this, open a dialogue between your mind and your heart so that you don’t have to lose something in order to give it the respect, care, and love you truly feel.
You see things from your perspective and never from the outside.
Just because you can properly foretell how a person will act or react in one situation does not mean you know them so well as to correctly guess how they will act in any situation; you do not truly know what is in the mind and heart of your friends.
We all lie.
If you were to wait for advice from a person better than you then you would be waiting for a very long time.
The truth about truth is that sometimes the truth does not matter.
There is no pattern or miracle cure to misery; no one is ever always happy.
We are all in this together, brothers and sisters, family and friends.
What do you hope to accomplish with one cruel or insensitive act?
Divorce, in life or death, is a necessary conclusion to marriage; be willing to let go, that is all that is required.
Anger is not necessarily bad, but it must be harnessed and only as a fuel to bring about some good, and not merely a mean to an ends.
Misery is a friend everyone has but no one enjoys having this friend shared with them.
Compassion does not smother the cold flame of misery but compassion can soothe the burn.
Depression, for all its faults, is a deep and powerful emotion and can be used.
Every moment of your life you are destroying the universe, whether you wish to or not; do not be idle, but give back either through adding to the world or to your own happiness.
With all things always take a moment to appreciate the here and now to fully grasp at what you experiencing.
If someone does something truly amazing for you then you must tell it from the rooftops; never stop praising the secret, good actions of others and always respect their wishes.
If you cannot set aside an hour to walk and talk with a friend or loved one then you need to decide how important they would be to you if you lost them forever.
If others know you are critical of them do they know how critical you are of yourself, and does it truly matter if they know or should you instead be less critical?
Compassion comes from knowledge, not experience. Empathy comes from experience, not necessarily knowledge. Knowing and experiencing something are quite different but are the results, the emotions, so dissimilar?
If two things make people, oddly, miserable, those being having too many options to choose from, and not having to struggle to succeed in life, then you must cherish your trials and limitations, and find strength in your weaknesses and joy in the faults of others.
You should have only one gear: go.
Do not reach the end of your life full of regrets of the things you did not do.
Argue against the rhetoric, move against the flow of the river, be your own entity.
If you learn you were wrong about someone’s supposed offense against you then you must seek their forgiveness straight away.
This time, like all times, is a very good one.
Never criticize or make light of someone’s action that has helped another.
Some pathetic people can only express love through broken and hurtful means; you do not have to take this, but try to understand why they do this and how much they truly love you.
We all hurt the ones we love.
We all make mistakes and forgive ourselves a hundred times a day; it would not hurt to forgive others even once.
Empathy comes with experience, and sometimes that experience must be taught rather than learned.
You should daydream each and every day.
Are you good enough?
Even murderers and rapists can still love.
Never ask a friend to forgive another, it is not your place. Offer wisdom, but not advice.
If you avoid people because they tire you, then do you also avoid exercise because it wears you out? Where is your need for growth?
When you experience a black hole moment use the intensity to reaffirm your goals in life; do not go out with a whimper.
When feeling empty, friends can easily make you forget you have a space needing filling at all.
If nothing can remove the feeling of emptiness then you are keeping yourself there.
Momentary pleasures do not give purpose to life and will eventually fade, but they are not to be discarded either.
Beauty may be important but it will be her personality that can destroy you.
Somehow nothing can compare to being in love and the contentment and meaning to life that comes with it; and with so much invested is it any wonder that it will hurt you one day?
If the hate won’t suffocate the love then how do you ever get over past lovers?
If nothing will change then lean back and enjoy the show.
Even worst enemies would not wish some things upon those they hate.
Evil intentions destroy themselves eventually.
If you can’t even learn from your own advice then how will you ever improve?
Do not think of yourself as so smart as to call your advice “sage” by any means.
You will never do everything you want or could. Reel in ambition and be reasonable, but never give up your dreams to anyone or anything; live.
I am a person who says I am a realist, though comes off as a pessimist, and yet is secretly an optimist.
If you have loved and lost then at least you have tasted those emotions, felt as one with another, and graced the sky; bittersweet has only one true embodiment and many would call it a victory.
The neurons in my skull, if lined up end to end, would wrap around the earth and stretch to the moon.
I am made of stardust; the stars died so I could be here and someday I shall return.
The atoms in my left hand are from different stars than the atoms in my left hand; I am a representation of the interconnectedness of the universe and to see this I merely have to look at my palms.
When I die I wish to be buried and not burned so that my energy content can be returned to the earth so that fora and fauna may dine on me as I have dined on fora and fauna throughout my life.
If you’ve never seen the southern hemisphere night sky then you have not seen half the universe.
If a person is happy and loving their fellow human beings, then I have no reason to assault their beliefs except to gratify my own pride.
In the end it is actions that matter; I can care less why a person would do a good thing, except that they do it and keep doing so.
Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy.
If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you. You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot. Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth.
Stop berating yourself for old mistakes.
If you’re not happy with who you are on the inside, you won’t be happy in a long-term relationship with anyone else either.
How do you expect to change something if you won’t do anything about it? Stop fooling yourself.
Stop rejecting new relationships because old ones didn’t work.
Sometimes the battle is two against one: you versus the other person and yourself.
Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others. Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it anyway.
Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things. The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.
If you refuse to let others know you are in pain, and put on a mask, then why would you feel resentment for others not caring when you’re simply succeeding?
If two things make people, oddly, miserable, those being having too many options to choose from, and not having to struggle to succeed in life, then cherish your trials and limitations, and find strength in your weaknesses and joy in the faults of others.
