Paulo Coelho on Writing

Join those who have never said: “it’s finished, I have to stop here”. Because just as winter is followed by spring, nothing comes to an end: after reaching your objective, you have to start again, always using all that you have learnt on the way.

Join those who sing, tell stories, enjoy life and have happiness in their eyes. Because happiness is contagious and always manages to keep people from being paralyzed by depression, loneliness and troubles.

And tell your story, even if it’s only for your family to read.

Paulo Coelho

An Interrupted Life

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

Etty Hillesum

Finding Our True Place

The most secret, sacred wish that lies deep down at the bottom of your heart, the wonderful thing that you hardly dare to look at, or to think about--the thing that you would rather die than have anyone else know of, because it seems so far beyond anything that you are, or have at the present time, that you fear that you would be cruelly ridiculed if the mere thought of it were known--that is just the very thing that you should be.

Emmet Fox

True Love

To me, true love is the sweetest thing in life. That's why we're all either in love or looking for love. Sometimes you have to work for it - especially when life gets in the way - but I believe true, deep love is always worth fighting for.

Anon

Ongoing Adventure

I've been learning a lot about living in the moment lately. I am one that tends to worry about tomorrow and lean on the past. I know now that it is hindering me from experiencing life. I am so quick to see the negative in everything that I give absolutely nothing a chance. I find myself saying, "No." instead of, "Yes." I don't leave my comfort zone and I rely on others to entertain me. This is not the person I want to be. I expect more from myself and I'm tired of watching life just pass me by. The waiting game is over. I'm on the hunt to find my passion, my evolution. I want to live my life fulfilled and present and honest.

GG

Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. We leave our homes for work, acting and even believing that we will reach our destinations with no unusual event startling us out of our set expectations. The truth is we know nothing, not where our cars will fail or when our buses will stall, whether our places of employment will be there when we arrive, or whether, in fact, we ourselves will arrive whole and alive at the end of our journeys.

Life is pure adventure and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.

Maya Angelou

Now-Here

Most of us live in the past, carrying our hurts, guilts and fears. We have to face the pain we carry, lest we spend the rest of our lives running away from it or letting it run us. But the only place you'll ever meet the real is now-here. It's the hardest place for us to live, the place where we're most afraid to live, because it feels so empty and boring. Now-here almost always feels like nowhere, and that's precisely where we must go.

Richard Rohr

Notes from "Hunting and Gathering"

She was tired, she should have put her elbows on the desk too, and told him the truth. Told him that if she wasn't eating at all, or almost nothing, it was because the stones were taking up all the room in her belly. That she woke up every day with the feeling that she was chewing gravel, that even before she opened her eyes she was suffocating. And that the world around her had become meaningless, and every new day was like a weight that was impossible to lift. So she cried. Not that she was sad, but to make it pass. The flood of tears, in the end, helped her to digest the pile of stones and get her breath back. Would he have listened? Would he have understood? Of course he would have. And that was precisely why she'd kept quiet.

"C'mon, sweetheart. Don't worry, we'll make it. We won't do any better than anyone else but we won't do any worse, either. We'll make it, you hear? We'll make it. We've got nothing to lose, since we have nothing to begin with. C'mon. Let's go.

Anna Gavalda

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be cleaning you out
For some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from the beyond.

Rumi