Self-Preserved

There are poets who sing you to sleep and poets who ready you for war and I want to be both.

I promise to plant kisses like seeds on your body, so in time you can grow to love yourself as I love you.

I yearn for genuine connections and honest energy. That’s what I need. That’s all I really need.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not ‘I love you’ for this or that reason, not ‘I love you if you love me.’ It’s love for no reason, love without an object.

“You Are the Master of Your Attitude

“Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.”

If you take the long view  the wicked do not flourish. They are like plants with showy flowers but weak and shallow roots. The virtuous are well grounded in dharma and through devoted discipline, they weather bad times and good, seeing them as the same.  Like the demons before them,  wicked people lose direction, and fall prey to discord.  Given to restless searching after pleasure, true and lasting happiness eludes them.

You’ll never change your life until you change something you do each day. The secret to success is in daily routine.

let me tell you something: no one is going to look at you, broken and shattered and think - damn, you are beautiful. no one is going to come pick up your broken pieces off the floor and assemble them into a beautiful whole. hell, you won’t even look at yourself and think - I made broken look beautiful. you know why? because all those writers lied to you. yes, all those with their poems of scraped knuckles and blood dripping down chins, pomegranate songs and loves that ripped through you like hurricanes. liars. so you and i, we are going to make a plan. you are not going to romanticize days when your brain tells you to smash that mirror, you are not going to romanticize the lover who doesn’t understand you but still writes about you. here is what you are going to romanticize instead: you are going to romanticize the first day of spring, its gentle hands all over your body, lifting you up until you are as light as a feather. you are going to romanticize the tea and honey kind of love, no hurricanes, but sunshine that builds you up from within, that helps you make it through the worst days. you are going to romanticize gentle hands of a friend in yours, telling you that it is going to be okay. because it is. and don’t trust poets, we’re no good, we love pretending that our jagged edges tantamount to a beautiful disaster, but in reality - there ain’t nothing beautiful about shaky hands holding a cigarette and empty eyes staring at the cracks in the walls. you know what is beautiful, instead? the days when you can look at yourself in the mirror and smile, scars and all. music that makes your soul flow like a river, books that offer comfort, families flocking together like overgrown birds to keep you safe and warm, friends that give you strength when you can find none, lovers who make you laugh through tears. baby, from now on you are going to romanticize healing; honey dripping down your fingertips, August nights that stick to your skin, the day you find your purpose, long car rides and singing so loud that no one can shut you up now. bad news: no one is coming to save you. good news: you can save yourself.

The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself. Seek therefore, not to find out who you are, but seek to determine who you want to be.