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''i wasted those years'' who cares. you lived the only life you could've lived in those moments
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“Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
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“Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Nice Quiet Place
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“I’m not everything I want to be, but l’m more than I was, and l’m still learning.”
— Charlotte Eriksson, Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself
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who are you when you are not watching tv or movies? when you aren't playing video games or reading a book or fanfiction or listening to music or whatever other kind of media that you engage with? who are you when your mind isn't in another world or story, when you are forced to sit with yourself and the only experience you have is your own sensorial life? can you define yourself outside of what you consume? who is that person? do you like them? can you bear it? can you bear it?
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“When you nurture the ability to witness your life in the third person, in extremis, or through prayer or meditation, there is an unavoidable shift in consciousness as you realize that who you are is not simply how you feel—but a presence beyond desire of any sort. Intense emotions that have held us prisoner all our lives suddenly lose power, are uncloaked as tricks of memory, exposed as tireless, groping sensations whose function is to keep us distracted by the body’s appetites until the body is no more.”
— Simon Van Booy, from The Presence of Absence (Godine, 2022)
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“You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch. Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy. You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like. If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.”
— Julien Smith, The Flinch (via wnq-anonymous)
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Don’t think about what can happen in a month. Don’t think about what can happen in a year. Just focus on the 24 hours in front of you and do what you can to get closer to where you want to be.
Eric Thomas
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“Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.”
— C.G. Jung
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“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
— Franz Kafka
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“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
— Albert Einstein
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