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The Buddha said that thousands of candles can be lit by a single candle.
“good” is subjective, and we’ve got to stop trying to prove how “good” we are and just be it, live it, revel in it, and celebrate it without putting others down in the process.
it’s my duty as a human to love and to rush to defend anyone who is being unjustly treated or oppressed.
That is the purpose of undefining something. It opens that thing up to interpretation and exploration. It creates space and allows for creativity. And where there is creativity, there is love.
I can remember speaking to a 12-year-old boy, a football player, and I asked him, I said, “How would you feel if, in front of all the players, your coach told you you were playing like a girl?” Now I expected him to say something like, I’d be sad; I’d be mad; I’d be angry, or something like that. No, the boy said to me . . . , “It would destroy me.” And I said to myself, “God, if it would destroy him to be called a girl, what are we then teaching him about girls?” —TONY PORTER
Because it’s one thing to feel fear, and it’s another thing to let it win.
And if you end up being on the receiving end of someone who puts you down to lift themselves up, you often then end up engaging in that same behavior or policing someone else to make yourself feel better so that the abuse can stop.
A cut is a cut, and even if it’s tiny, everyone knows a paper cut can sometimes be as painful or even more so than a larger wound.
Maybe because “looking” strong is not a way to be strong, but a way to pretend to not be weak? Maybe looking powerful is the best way we’ve found to pretend to be powerful—even if inside we feel weak.
SO WHAT if we don’t know where we are going or who we are today? So what if we are feeling lost? Every inhale needs an exhale before our lungs can refill.
women are conditioned to move out of the way, whereas men are conditioned to take up space wherever we are, often without any regard for others.
hearing someone is different from listening to someone.
Scientific evidence points to the fact that talking about your inner battles with someone who is empathetic and actively listens actually helps relieve the pain.
Get comfortable being uncomfortable.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá tells us to “behold a beautiful garden full of flowers, shrubs, and trees. Each flower has a different charm, a peculiar beauty, its own delicious perfume and beautiful color. The trees too, how varied are they in size, in growth, in foliage—and what different fruits they bear! Yet all these flowers, shrubs and trees spring from the self-same earth, the same sun shines upon them and the same clouds give them rain.” And he goes on to say, “If you meet those of different race and color from yourself . . . think of them as different colored roses growing in the beautiful garden of
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What matters more in that moment, my intention or the impact of the sting? In relationships, impact must always outweigh intention.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”
what makes us happiest is not having what we want, but wanting what we have.
at the end of our lives . . . all that matters is not what we took, but what we gave. So let’s let our true measure of success not be based on acquiring the things of this world, but in giving ourselves to improve this world.
we each have only so much energy and time in a given day, and what we choose to water, grows.
the little things really are the big things,
No matter how hard it was at the beginning, or how much I was challenged, it still felt right. It felt like growth, and even though it was uncomfortable, I believe that growth is always, always good.
I would argue that the problem is most of us now have somehow been socialized to think of the honeymoon phase as something that is normal, expected. Therefore, if the relationship doesn’t start off amazing, then there must be something wrong. That’s why, regardless of the intention, I think the idea is actually doing far more harm than good.
We need to be conscious of what we are using to build our relationships—our houses—out of, especially in this on-demand swipe culture where the illusion of happiness and the grass-is-greener mentality are simply a few clicks away.
know yourself, know your love language, but don’t love your partner the way you want to be loved; love them the way they want to be loved.
love is a verb.
I think showing up is a muscle, and like anything, it needs to be developed.
“as men we must learn to be flexible and not rigid, we must understand that while our instincts are to be stiff, we, like the tree, will be more susceptible to the winds in the storm if we are rigid.”
Rumi quote “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Because what I need—in the same way I need food, water, and shelter—is a sense of belonging.
“The cave that you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” —JOSEPH CAMPBELL
“The wound is where the light enters you.”—RUMI
There are no prerequisites for worthiness.
