A New Adventure Every Day

Growth, Letting Go, Life 0

We’re all beautiful and unique, but none of us is perfect, thank God. What a pain that would be!…

So all this striving for perfection is a bit sad. How about settling for being a great human being with flaws like everything else, including your Persian carpet? The need to be perfect does nothing but restrict us: restrict us in our creativity, in relationships, in work, in dealing with our children (whom we then also expect to be perfect) and in dealing with others who can never live up to our expectations. Look at all we’re losing. Not satisfied to be ourselves, we’re in constant competition with others, looking over our shoulder at what everyone else is doing and how much better or worse it is than our effort, and the moment, the experience, the wonder and the juice are lost forever.

Try to accept life and yourself as a constantly changing masterpiece with shape and color and texture that offer you a new adventure every day. Not perfect. Not complete. But developing and exciting, with every day a new brushstroke and a step towards perfection. The masterpiece is not meant to be complete until the final brushstroke has been placed upon it and the artist finally retires.

So experiment with life and don’t worry about getting it wrong. You can’t! Whatever you do, no matter how it turns out, you’ll have learned something that you wouldn’t have learned had you done it differently. Nothing is a failure. And nothing is lost.

Dr. Brenda Davies, Unlocking the Heart Chakra, p. 80

Love Is Magic.

Growth, Love 0

And love is magic! The more love we give away, the more we have. And the more we love, the better we feel about ourselves, the happier we are, the more creative we feel. A bonus is that those who actively love, live longer!

Love is the most therapeutic commodity known, a powerful antidote to all ills, to hatred which infects great areas of the world and the fear that prevents us from denouncing it.

Dr. Brenda Davies, Unlocking the Heart Chakra, p. 41

Acceptance

Growth, Healing, Letting Go, Life 0

I put a life together with my family and friends and dogs. I learned to make use of the solitude I now had aplenty. I started writing, wanting to make something useful come from our catastrophe, and working hard, I began to be happy….

I lived with this shame a long time before I could speak of it. Finally I told my sister. “But it’s not about Rich’s accident,” Eliza said. “You don’t want to return to unhappiness. That’s all.” I will never forget that instant of absolute clarity. And just like that, I was free.

— Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life, p. 123

False Nobility

Growth, Relationships 0

I have met many women and a few men in what are clearly difficult, sometimes abusive, or extremely negative relationships who think that they are doing something spiritually wonderful by staying in a situation that is clearly eroding their soul. This is an example of the tribal belief Spiritual growth is hard, and you have to change yourself so you can be happy in any situation with any person at all times. Personally, I don’t believe this at all. It is responsible for more people staying in bad situations than any other tribal belief about spirituality.

— Christel Nani, Sacred Choices, p. 284

A Single Purpose

Growth, Life, Love 1

We are all here for a single purpose: to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better. We can do this through losing as well as through winning, by having and by not having, by succeeding or by failing. All we need to do is to show up openhearted for class.

— Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, Kitchen Table Wisdom, p. 80

Changed by Reading

Books, Growth, Inspiration, Joy 0

A book on virtually any subject, when written well and falling into the right hands, can produce a transcendent emotional response. And one such experience can lead to another and another, in a delightfully unpredictable way that is different for each person.

It is said that no love is sincerer than the love of food. Perhaps no love is vaster in its particulars than the love of books.

As adults, we can use the power of book love not only to entertain us, but also to inspire us to do new things, and to make significant changes in our lives. We can even use our love of books to help others, and maybe save a bit of the world.

That’s what reading is all about — the pure pleasure of it, how it changes you, how you live your life differently because of what you read.

— Steve Leveen, The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, p. 8

More My True Self

God, Growth, Peace, Trust 0

God, in his faithfulness is changing me…. Instead of making me into someone else, he is making me more me. And that is one of the beautiful things about him. That the more his we become, the more ourselves we become; more our true selves…. To have a gentle and quiet spirit is to have a heart of faith, a heart that trusts in God, a spirit that has been quieted by his love and filled with his peace. Not a heart that is striving and restless.

— Stasi Eldredge & John Eldredge, Captivating, p. 134

Making Mistakes

Compassion, Forgiveness, Growth, Letting Go, Life 0

Trying to be what I am not, and cannot be, is not only arrogant, it is stupid. . . . If I make myself a martyr to appease my false guilt, then I am falling into the age-old trap of pride. I fall into it often. . . . If I am not free to accept guilt when I am wrong, then I am not free at all. If all my mistakes are excused, if there’s an alibi, a rationalization for every blunder, then I am not free at all. I am subhuman. . . . I do all kinds of things which aren’t right, which aren’t sensitive or understanding. I neglect all kinds of things which I ought to do. . . . One reason I don’t feel guilty is that I no longer feel I have to be perfect. I am not in charge of the universe, whereas a humanist has to be. . . this inability presents her with a picture of herself which is not the all-competent, in-control-of-everything person she wants to see.

— Madeleine L’Engle, Summer of the Great-Grandmother