Some languages are so constructed — English among them — that we each only really speak one sentence in our lifetime. That sentence begins with your first words, toddling around the kitchen, and ends with your last words right before you step into the limousine, or in a nursing home, the night-duty attendant vaguely on hand. Or, if you are blessed, they are heard by someone who knows you and loves you and will be sorry to hear the sentence end. — Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Life
Good Bones
Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful. — Maggie Smith, “Good Bones” Read more →
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. — Marcus Aurelius
A Kind of Sadness
There is a kind of sadness that comes from knowing too much, from seeing the world as it truly is. It is the sadness of understanding that life is not a grand adventure, but a series of small, insignificant moments, that love is not a fairy tale, but a fragile, fleeting emotion, that happiness is not a permanent state, but a rare, fleeting glimpse of something we can never hold onto. And in that understanding, there is a profound loneliness, a sense of being cut off from the world, from other people, from oneself. — Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse Read more →
Traveling Alone
Oh, If I had a son I would make him laugh, I would teach him something I’d say, “Son, you gotta hold your own And it’s good to have a taste for traveling alone” — Tift Merritt, “Traveling Alone” Read more →
Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it. — Schopenhauer
Half a Life
Do not live half a life and do not die a half death If you choose silence, then be silent When you speak, do so until you are finished If you accept, then express it bluntly Do not mask it If you refuse then be clear about it for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance Do not accept half a solution Do not believe half truths Do not dream half a dream Do not fantasize about half hopes Half the way will get you no where You are a whole that exists to live a life not half a life. — Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet Read more →
Can I Get a Witness?
We sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair. — Maggie Nelson, Bluets I can’t live alone anymore. I’ve tried it and I can’t do it, the reason being that I need to have a witness to my life. Without the witness, I say things and no one hears them, I do things and no one sees them. It’s like I don’t exist. As a younger person, I lived alone successfully, but even then I imagined a witness, an observer. Read more →
Places, Loved Ones
No, I have never found The place where I could say This is my proper ground, Here I shall stay; Nor met that special one Who has an instant claim On everything I own Down to my name; To find such seems to prove You want no choice in where To build, or whom to love; You ask them to bear You off irrevocably, So that it’s not your fault Should the town turn dreary, The girl a dolt. Yet, having missed them, you’re Bound, none the less, to act As if what you settled for Mashed you, in fact; And wiser to keep away From thinking you still might trace Uncalled-for to this day Your person, your place. — Philip Larkin, “Places, Loved Ones” Read more →
The Same as Everyone Else’s
Recognize that your struggle and your suffering is the same as everyone else’s, I think that’s the beginning of a responsible life. Otherwise, we are in a continual savage battle with each other with no possible solution, political, social, or spiritual. — Leonard Cohen Read more →
Transform Your Life!
People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is— just be a little kinder. — Aldous Huxley Read more →
Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don’t fool. — Robert Brault
You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good. — Jerry West
Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else. — Tennessee Williams
The 5 Strengths
The 5 strengths are: strong determination, familiarization, the positive seed, reproach, and aspiration. How you conduct yourself is important. When you are dying practice the 5 strengths. Read more →
Positive Psychology
Discuss: There is no such thing as virtue. No such thing as a good life. No such thing as happiness. No such thing as a future. The future is merely determined by the past. Read more →
A New Purpose in Life
I’m taking an online course on Finding Purpose and Meaning in Life . . . when my son was growing up, I felt like my purpose in life was to be a good father and to take care of my family. After the boy grew up and moved out on his own, I struggled for many years to find a reason for being alive anymore. I thought maybe raising the boy was my destiny and I had fulfilled it. Now I’m happy to say that with a lot of guidance, I’ve figured out my new purpose in life, a new way to help and serve people: taking out the trash. Read more →
Our Town
On this date — Feb. 4, 1938 — the Thornton Wilder play Our Town opened on Broadway . . . Emily: Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I’m dead. You’re a grandmother, Mama! Wally’s dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it — don’t you remember? But, just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s really look at one another! … I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back — up the hill — to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye, Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover’s Corners….Mama and Papa. Good-bye… Read more →
Epitaph
He loved, was not loved, and his life ended in disaster. Let’s leave it at that. Read more →
Life is Beautiful, Living is Pain
Hopes rise and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain. The sound of music floats down a dark street. Hunter S. Thompson Read more →