Destinations

I rarely end up where I was intending to go,
but often I end up somewhere I needed to be.

          Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

 

 

 

 

Our proper occupation

In a sense, people are our proper occupation.
Our job is to do them good and put up with them.
But when they obstruct our proper tasks,
they become irrelevant to us--like sun, wind, and animals.
Our actions may be impeded by them,
but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions.
Because we can accommodate and adapt.
The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way. 

                       Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Hays translation)

 

 

 

Believe!

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul
into believing in government and business.

            Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues 

 

 

 

 

How to save the world

Moyers: Unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus,
we're not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves.

Campbell: But in doing that you save the world.
The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there's no doubt about it.
The world without spirit is a wasteland.
People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around,
changing the rules, and who's on top, and so forth. No, no!
Any world is a valid world if it's alive.
The thing to do is to bring life to it,
and the only way to do that is to find in your own case
where the life is and become alive yourself.

                    The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers