It does not matter what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us. We are being questioned by life – daily & hourly. Take the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and fulfill the tasks which it sets for each individual.
Viktor Frankl
Lift up your eyes upon the day breaking for you, give birth again to the dream. Each new hour holds new chances for new beginnings.
Angelou
For human beings, motion is life. Our bodies are made to move. By exercising modestly on a regular basis, we can change the rate of our aging on a biochemical level. Regular exercise also improves mood, boosts energy levels, and builds self-confidence.
Art & Science of Aging Well by Mark E. Williams, M.D.
Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal.
As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.
This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change.
Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation – the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs & peaks.
If you watch carefully, you will see this undulation in every department of his life – his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up & down.
As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness & poverty.
Fun is closely related to Joy – a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.
THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS by C.S.LEWIS
Think of the flow of thoughts in your mind as a social media feed. Throughout your life, you have “subscribed” to different things without noticing. Now their posts keep showing up in your feed, and you don’t know from where. Some are true & interesting, but many are unhelpful or simply untrue.
Practical Meditation by Giovanni Dienstmann
Brother Francis produced the blueprint. “The highwayman was kind enough to leave this in my keeping, Holy Father. He – he mistook it for a copy of the illumination which I was bringing as a gift.”
“You did not correct his mistake?”
Brother Francis blushed. “I’m ashamed to admit, Holy Father –”
“This, then, is the original relic you found in the crypt?”
“Yes –”
The Pope’s smile became wry. “So, then – the bandit thought your work was the treasure itself? Ah – even a robber can have a keen eye for art, yes? Monsignor Aguerra told us of the beauty of your commemoration. What a pity that it was stolen.”
“It was nothing, Holy Father. I only regret that I wasted fifteen years.”
“Wasted? How ‘wasted’? If the robber had not been misled by the beauty of your commemoration, he might have taken this, might he not?”
Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1959)
People often misjudge their abilities. Those with less than average abilities overestimate their true abilities. Those with higher don’t realize how much higher. Stupid people are too stupid to know how stupid they are. Some smart people wrongly assume that most others can do what they can.
We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman
Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!
Imagine first that the present is past, and second, that the past may yet be changed & amended.
Logotherapy by Victor Frankl
When you look at an object, you see one side of it at a time; the nature of vision. When you think about something, you think about it in one context at a time; the nature of thought.
Context determines what your mind thinks just as viewing-angle determines what your eye sees.