This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and finally you don’t think about it at all. The thing that was your bright treasure. You don’t think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember. That is what happens.
— _Alice Munro, Chance

one the best analogies i've ever read about the end of a relationship. learning that you can feel love for someone but know they are not the best for you.

And you and I, we will end the way a movie ends: lights will flood the theater, suddenly spotlighting the audience, who are blinking their glossy eyes back into reality. They will come to their feet, stretching muscles and sorting through the things they have brought, choosing quickly what to dispose and what to keep.

They have expected this, of course, the film reaching the end of its crackling length.

For weeks afterward they will bring it up in conversation, discuss the lines and themes which struck them like fists and stay with them like bruises blooming beneath the skin. The negative image of light once darkness descends. The radio will broadcast the songs that played in the background, lilted and lifted the scenes, and the people will remember, may sing along quietly. The story may visit them in dreams, veiled and vague, and they will wake up at home the same way they left the lobby, shaking loose the colors and characters.

They will lie in the morning light, eyes closed and then open, and think about what, if anything, it meant to them at all.

-l.j. markel

"Faith is not really for problem solving. Faith is that attitude which allows you to fully experience your experiences, and not to eliminate the mysterious, problematic, and threatening parts of those experiences." --Richard Rohr

rainer maria rilke has long been on my top 5 list.

How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
So you mustn’t be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. In you, dear Mr. Kappus, so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like someone who is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are also the doctor, who has to watch over himself. But in every sickness there are many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And that is what you, insofar as you are your own doctor, must now do, more than anything else.

...And if there is one more thing that I must say to you, it is this: Don’t think that the person who is trying to comfort you now lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes give you much pleasure. His life has much trouble and sadness, and remains far behind yours. If it were otherwise, he would never have been able to find those words.

his letters to a young poet is simply beautiful.

An elderly Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life…

He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me, it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One wolf is evil—he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority, and ego.

The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

They thought about it for a minute, and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win, Grandfather?”

The Elder simply replied, “The one you feed.”

my life is a constant struggle with Self. it is easy to come across at righteous (not self-righteous), pious, compassionate when online. in day-to-day life, the truth is that i am just as impatient and abrasive as most others.
today i saw a facebook status of a girl i don't know, and she was complaining of how frustrating the past 2 days had been- waiting for internet to be installed in her new home.
as a friend of mine pointed out... what a middle-class america complaint!

she's doing something as frivolous as updating a facebook status (from her mobile PHONE, mind you) and loudly (in internet speak) complaining about her lack of readily available internet.

check your life, and i will check mine, and let's work to eradicate the ungrateful, materialistic feelings of entitlement that permeate our Western lives. not to be self righteous, or to become "better" than anyone else, but because that is what this world desperately needs.