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“The fight isn’t over until you win it, Fitz. That’s all you have to remember. No matter what the other man thinks. Or the horse.”
To finally confront the worst there is, to look it squarely in the face and say, “I know you. You have hurt me, almost to death, but still I live. And I will go on living.”
One can only walk so far from one’s true self before the bond either snaps, or pulls one back.
What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?”
It’s not the kind of work a man does that says he can be proud or not. It’s how he does it. Be proud of yourself.”
‘The man who must brag for himself knows that no one else will.’ Then he told me there is no better way to learn the sea than at the oar of a boat. And that, in his younger years, the ax was always his weapon, too. He has promised my sisters and me a dory of our own, next summer, that we can take out on the sea on fine days….” She faltered suddenly. “I chatter, do I not?”
we are two old men, who have grown old together. Sometimes that is a greater closeness. We have come through time to your day and age. We can talk together, quietly, and share memories of a time that exists no more. I can tell you how it was, but it is not the same. It is like being two foreigners, trapped in a land we have come to, unable to return to our own, and having only each other to confirm the reality of the place we once lived. At least, once we could.”
It was possible to be homesick for a time, and to be lonely for the only other person who could recall it.
The exercise for centering oneself is a simple one. Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then, stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things. Then you will find the Now, the time that stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is. Then, in that place, you will finally have time to be yourself.
