5:49 AM

We are what we love.

Take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more. You’re doing just fine.

I think I’m far too hopeful and trusting…Because I grew up with this naïve expectation of people doing right, I get shocked by every little violation. But however naïve I might be, I do feel that books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.

“Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, sit down with myself and explain that things were going to be okay, that everybody loses ground sometimes and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s the way life works. This is hard to understand in the moment. You get to thinking about the girl who rejected you, the job you got fired from, the test you failed, and you lose sight of the big picture — the fact that life has a beautiful way of remaking itself every few weeks.”

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.

مشيت ورا احساسي، وداني المطبخ.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

Instead of resisting, allow change to unfold and try to understand what’s transforming and why.

We frequently envy the imagination of children. But I would argue that adults imagine plenty, roaming the world deliberately blinded. We trap ourselves in our minds, our fantasies, stuck in our memories or desires, the past or the future, condemning the present to obscurity.

You desire to know the art of living? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.