A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 218

Life is full of peaks and valleys, triumphs and tribulations. We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle or difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent. We resist the truth of difference and diversity. We resist acknowledging that our constants exist within a framework where everything is always changing. We resist change. When we are able to face the reality of highs and lows, embracing both as necessary for our full development and self actualization, we can feel that interior well-being that is the foundation of inner peace. That life of appreciation for difference, for diversity, a life wherein one embraces suffering as central to the experience of joy is mirrored for us in our natural environment.

– from the chapter “Moved by Mountains” in Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks