The only moment to be alive

We tend to be alive in the future, not now.
We say, "Wait until I finish school and get my Ph.D. degree,
and then I will be really alive."

When we have it, and it wasn't easy to get, we say to ourselves,
"I have to wait until I have a job in order to be really alive."
And then after the job, a car. After the car, a house.

We are not capable of being alive in the present moment.
We tend to postpone being alive to the future,
the distant future, we don't know when.

Now is not the moment to be alive.
We may never be alive at all in our entire life.
Therefore, the technique, if we have to speak of a technique,
is to be in the present moment,
    to be aware that we are here and now,
        and the only moment to be alive is the present moment.

                                    Thích Nhất Hạnh, Being Peace

Involved in mankind

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls
may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him.
And perchance I may think myself
so much better than I am. . .

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

            John Donne, born 22 January 1572
            Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Meditation 27 

 

 

 

 

Advice to live by

Surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming.

Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be.

The top of one mountain is the bottom of the next, so keep climbing.


        André De Shields, accepting 2019 Tony Award for his role in Hadestown

 

 

Sound familiar?

Dismissive incomprehension
is the act of displaying one’s incomprehension
(or pretending to be ignorant)
of the meaning of some other agent’s speech,
in order to dismiss that speech
and the agent who made that speech.

Matthew J. Cull
Dismissive Incomprehension: A Use of Purported Ignorance to Undermine Others
Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy

 

To read the full article:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02691728.2019.1625982

 

 

 

 

Poem 47

Between you and me only few differences remain; yours is a
weary tenderness, mine a weariness grown tender.

                 Dulce Maria Loynaz, Poems Without Name

 

 

 

 

 

We are it

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back —
        but they are gone.
                We are it.
                        It is up to us.
                                It is up to you.

                                Marian Wright Edelman, in The Art of Winning Commitment

 

 

 

 

 

Nonviolence or nonexistence

There are certain things in our nation and in the world
which I am proud to be maladjusted
and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted
until the good societies realize —
I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to —
segregation and discrimination. 

I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry.
I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions
that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. 

I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism,
to self-defeating effects of physical violence. 

But in a day when sputniks and explorers are dashing through outer space
and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere,
no nation can win a war. 

It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence.
It is either nonviolence or nonexistence…

Martin Luther King, Jr., Social Justice and the Emerging New Age
Western Michigan University, December 1963