Jordan Bach

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”

*parts a bead curtain as i enter the room, carrying a glass of lemonade* 

When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.

I am what you can’t take away

Growth is painful. Change is painful.But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.

A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no “brief candle” to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.

If you miss the present moment you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious.