I’ll never know and neither will you about the life you didn’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.
— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. 75.
You get it right when you realize that you cannot go back to who you once were. And this is a good thing. You already did that person. Now it is time to be the new you. Now it is time to embrace that person you were who got you here. That person is brave. That person is resilient. That person is complex. That person is deserving. You are deserving.
This is why so many people say in hindsight, Now it all makes sense. It is not because they made one decision that turned out perfectly – that landed them in the room they wanted to stay in for the rest of their lives. It is because they made a series of decisions, and each one led them into a new room. And even when they were sure a room was not where they were supposed to be, or it felt really hard, or they could not imagine it getting better, they did not give up. They realized that they had to keep going forward into the next room and then the next, until they found the one that felt right.
— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 183
You get it right when you start to see that there are many ways for things to turn out and that if you are only focused on one, you will miss out. When you begin to see that there are as many incredible outcomes as there are paths. When you stop expecting it to be smooth and easy all the time. When you stop perceiving that other people have it easier than you and stop comparing yourself to others. Once you stop envisioning some destination where you think you “ought†to be going, you will finally see all the amazing possibilities and opportunities actually in front of you.
— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 182-183
When someone says to you, “I love you,” and says it from the heart, it is because he or she is a witness to the essence of who you are. In simple translation, “I love you” means “I see you.” Love has turned this person into a seer. Unlike love’s imposters, infatuation and lust, which offer only a partial perception, love sees with the heart and it sees the whole person. Love sees your eternal loveliness. Love sees how loveable you really are.
When people say to you, “I love you,” and it is meant truly, they are not relating to you as just a body; they see your soul. Love is not blind; it is visionary. Love sees past physical appearances. Someone who loves you sees that you have a body, but doesn’t think you are a body. How you look is not who you are. Similarly, someone who loves you recognizes you are a good person, a kind person, and a loving person, for example, but sees beyond that too. This person recognizes that you have a personality, but knows you are not just an image or a set of behaviors. Love sees something more. In essence, love is what you experience when your soul sees the soul of another.
— Robert Holden, Loveability, p. 97-98
O God, help me to believe the truth about myself
no matter how beautiful it is!
Amen.
— Macrina Wiederkehr, quoted by Robert Holden in Loveability, p. 77
When we experience some traumatic change in our life – whether it’s the passing of a parent, a painful divorce, or, God forbid, the death of a child – as much as we might yearn to go back to the way things once were, it is impossible. What was behind us no longer exists as we knew it, not because it changed but rather because we changed. It’s kind of like how the house you grew up in did not get smaller; you got bigger. What happened in the past changed who you are, and now you cannot return to that old you because that you no longer exists.
This is a painful truth to accept, especially when we are in a dark hallway, scared and unsure of what lies ahead. When we are stricken with doubts and fears about the future, our brains reflexively tell us that the past was better; and whether this is true or not, our tendency is to believe it. So it is understandable that instead of running forward to the unknown our instinct is to run backward, toward what is known: the past.
— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 160-161
Even if your parents weren’t perfect, and even if you weren’t raised with unconditional love, and even if your history is full of heartache, the truth remains that whether someone loves you or not has no bearing on how loveable you really are. Your childhood is not the last chapter in your story. Your first love is not your only love. Your greatest heartache is not the whole story of your life. Your parents are not God. An unhappy past, no matter how terrible, is not a reason to say “I am not loveable,” nor is it a reason to stop loving yourself. Actually, it is a reason to love yourself more.
You can only be held back by your past if you use it to reject yourself in the present.
— Robert Holden, Loveability, p. 76
Most of our decisions do not lead us exactly where we want to go. Yet the more narrowly focused we are on a particular destination — the more focused we are on getting to a particular room — the harder it can be to see the alternatives. After all, if you’ve spent half your life chasing a dream — whether a dream job, a dream marriage, or a dream family — it’s terrifying to suddenly switch course and take a chance on something different. Yet only once we broaden our scope of vision can we see all the many other possibilities for happiness.
— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 148
And the joke, or tragedy, of it all is that these golden moments [of our past experience] which are so tormenting if we erect them into a norm, are entirely nourishing, wholesome, and enchanting if we are content to accept them for what they are, for memories. Properly bedded down in a past which we do not miserably try to conjure back, they will send up exquisite growths. Leave the bulbs alone, and the new flowers will come up. Grub them up and hope by fondling and sniffing, to get last year’s blooms, and you will get nothing. “Unless a seed die. . .”
— C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, Chapter 5
Gratitude supports basic trust. Gratitude helps you to suspend your judgment. It gives you another angle, another way of looking at things. “Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you,” I wrote in Be Happy. Sometimes cancellations, rejections, traffic delays, bad weather, and even more bad weather can come bearing gifts. A layoff, an illness, or the end of a relationship may well be the start of something wonderful. “We don’t know what anything is really for, says Louise. “Even a tragedy might turn out to be for our greatest good. That’s why I like to affirm Every experience in my life benefits me in some way.”
— Robert Holden and Louise Hay, Life Loves You, p. 160