Wisdom & Inspiration

Unfortunately, I didn’t think of cataloguing them until I was on the third one, and sadly, I’d already forgotten the first two. (If anyone reading remembers, please let me know; else I’ll just have to try to remember to check the Internet Archive next year.) Now, on to the quotes:

Love flowers best in openness and freedom.—Edward Abbey
I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.—Thomas Paine
[F]reedom should be fun!—Mike Hoy, proprietor of Loompanics Books

I’ve been thinking about Joey’s response in our ongoing conversation about getting free and personal freedom, but have been too busy and/or distracted to write a proper response. As a placeholder—and foreshadowing—I will quote from The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. The context is Prof. Bernardo de la Paz speaking to Wyoming Knott [emphasis in original]:

“... I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

Any товарищи got a problem with that? ;-)

I recently stumbled across a quotation I’d written on a slip of paper some time ago. I didn’t record any reference along with it, so I don’t know where I encountered this statement by Ferdinand Protzman on love. Since reading it, it’s occupied a fair amount of space in my mind ... but I can’t really compose a well-crafted summation of my responses to it.

Anyone who cares to share their responses is welcome to do so in the comments. I’ll join in, as I can: much of my day will be spent in the kitchen, making truffles and caramels. Here’s the quote:

Love can alter people’s lives in positive ways .... It can also break their hearts, crush their spirits, and kill them.

One thing that occurred to me is that we never know where our loving someone might go; even when love starts out as a positive thing, it can lead to enormous pain.

In a very good post on quitting (the comments on it so far are good, too), Kirsten incidentally offers this bit on compromise:

By compromising again and again ... we ended up with lives that were tolerable but nothing close to what either of us really wanted.

Oh boy, can I relate ... and many thoughts and questions spring to mind as a result, but I’ve a lot of things to do today, so it’ll have to wait for another time.

I’m trying to live this way ... but I confess, right now I’m finding it a bit challenging.

Make the best use of what is in your power and take the rest as it happens.

From Epictetus—who has a lot of good quotations on that page, but a few clunkers as well.

Everybody assumes they know what the social contract is, but no two people agree on it in every particular. That tends to make a mockery of the “conform or leave” arguments.

From Bacchus of Eros blog.

A topic that comes up often in the counseling I do is forgiveness. That was a serious part of my hospice work as well, and I've learned much about it over the years - both in my work and in my personal life.

We all have a complex mixture of experiences, old hurts and misunderstandings, resentments and fears. Most of us have at least some serious trauma - physical and/or emotional - from our past, and most fear such trauma from future events as well.

But our attitudes toward it can differ tremendously.

Have pity on those who are too cowardly to test the unknown, for they will never know what could have laid [sic] over the next horizon.

From “P”.

I read this statement a while ago, and immediately agreed with it. But as I thought about it, I started to wonder if it necessarily has to be so. So far, I am inclined to think it is. Here’s the statement, written by John Taylor Gatto:

We long for homes we can never have as long as we have institutions like school, television, corporation, and government in loco parentis.

What do you think? Am I overthinking things again?

No law can give power to private persons; every law transfers power from private persons to government.

From Isabel Paterson.

[T]his is how society works. Some people become attached to, and find meaning from, things that other people do not care for or understand. There's no point in judging how other people find meaning and happiness in non-traditional communities. The important thing is to celebrate that they did find meaning and happiness.

From James Leroy Wilson, in Cyber Salvation. Inspiring stories leading to this quote, too.

(For all my teevee-watching friends: I shall try to remember this lesson.)

I don’t know which is more accurate to say of me—that I like to give of myself to others, or that I like to help others. (In my mind those aren’t exactly the same things.) Irrespective of which it is, sometimes my offering isn’t wanted. Maybe that’s true more often than I know ... maybe it’s behind some of the failures to follow up that happen. I probably will never know. I do think that I am often too pushy in my desire to give and/or help ... but hearing this the other day stopped me in my tracks:

A person cannot give unless there’s someone out there who wants to receive.

I think, in addition to channeling my inner two-year-old more often, it would serve me very well to not pursue my desire to assist when there’s no one around, hoping or waiting to receive some help.

From “Mr. Refuse to be Afraid” himself, in What am I Doing Here?:

Refuse to be afraid to be yourself. Refuse to be afraid to express yourself. Refuse to be afraid of government and any other authority that portrays itself as a way out of the scary stuff. That which they want you to fear is not as scary as the compromises to your Self that will happen if you turn responsibility for your safety and security over to someone else. Those compromises inevitability make you less free.

Wonderfully put.

Since I can’t seem to organize my thoughts on the subject nearest and dearest me at the moment, I’ll shift my focus to something else.

Well, she said many things I find inspiring, it turns out. Here are a couple examples: