Hi ,
I hope you are well and doing OK. This week I'm simply sharing some quotes that inspired me this week as we all deal with the upheaval of COVID, personal challenges and the necessary upheaval around social justice. Personal favourite quotes include #2 and #9, and I've been mostly pondering #6 and #10.
It's important to remember that as light is made beautiful by darkness, personal growth that comes from difficult times is going to be brighter, deeper and more potent. This is our chance to grow, to shine - by embracing difficulty and challenge - as best we can...
I hope you're inspired by these quotes about the importance of difficulty and challenge - and how to approach it - in our lives:
- "It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand." Madeleine L'Engle
- "People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within." Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
- "Just as the tumultuous chaos of a thunderstorm brings a nurturing rain that allows life to flourish, so too in human affairs times of advancement are preceded by times of disorder. Success comes to those who can weather the storm." translation from the 'I
Ching'
- "I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship." Louisa May Alcott
- "Ultimately, we must learn to trust ourselves. When we do this intimately and intelligently, the world opens full of meaning before us. We find that we ourselves are the doorway to a fathomless understanding of the source of life itself. We need only to learn to walk through it." James Thornton
- "Learning to live with ambiguity is learning to live with how life really is, full of complexities and strange surprises." James Hollis
- "When flowing water ... meets with obstacles on its path, a blockage in its journey, it pauses. It increases in volume and strength, filling up in front of the obstacle and eventually spilling past it.... Do not turn and run, for there is nowhere worthwhile for you to go. Do not attempt to push ahead into the danger ... emulate the example
of the water: Pause and build up your strength until the obstacle no longer represents a blockage." translation from the 'I Ching'
- "To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness." Ursula K. Le Guin
- "In their daily life, all are braver than they know." Henry David Thoreau
- "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust
I'd love to know which quotes you like best from the list above - and if you have a quote you're using to inspire you right now!
Simply reply to this email :)
