Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
Dag Hammarskjold
President Obama’s first term (and hopefully last) as POTUS might as well be called President Bush’s third term, given the vast number of similarities (pretty much everything) between the two. Even their speeches are just rehashed versions of one another:
Today we are part of a broad coalition. We are answering the calls of a threatened people. And we are acting in the interests of the United States and the world…
President Obama, March 19, 2011
American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger…
President Bush, March 19, 2003
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love.
Washington Irving
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
Robert Brault
There’s countless little things that I notice day-to-day that make my aching heart ache even more. The picture above is of a couple of the last notes that my Mom wrote for us to find when they would leave in the mornings on the weekends to go to the mountains. Notes like these I will forever miss.
The little things were always the big things. The missing little things are the daily reminders that what happened is real, and the little things that would have been, can now no longer be.
What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
William Least Heat-Moon
I posted this on Facebook in response to an entry by a page that I’m following. Unsuprisingly, I’ve received quite a number of ‘likes’, which is encouraging to me that maybe while the public is mostly silent today, they may actually be seeing what is happening within our nation.
It doesn’t really matter which party wins. The core of both are the same, and the public is just distracted by the issues that each always promise they will fix. Each party make promises to fix issues, and creates others in return, even w/o fixing those they promise to. All while they allow our economy to crash, waste our taxpayer money invading and trying to police the world, and always expanding our government’s role in each and every one of our lives. Vote for those that still believe in the Constitution.
What Cancer Can’t Do
Cancer is so limited. It cannot cripple love. It cannot shatter hope. It cannot corrode faith. It cannot eat away peace. It cannot destroy confidence. It cannot kill friendship. It cannot shut out memories. It cannot silence courage. It cannot invade the soul. It cannot reduce eternal life. It cannot quench the spirit. It cannot lesson the power of the resurrection. Amen—amen.
Unknown
It’s easy to look at people and make quick judgments about them, their present and their past, but you’d be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides. What a person shows to the world is only one tiny facet of the iceberg hidden from sight. And more often then not, it’s lined with cracks and scars that go all the way to the foundation of their soul.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
I posted this quote up on Facebook yesterday as my status, and got quite a few ‘likes’ and comments on it.
It expresses the thoughts that I often think of when I see people that I don’t know—what their road in life has been like and what their life’s story is, or how they made it to where they are now—whether that’s complete and total happiness and loving life, or being at rock bottom and hating life. If only we’d take these hidden stories into account before being so quick to decide on what someone must be like, or how someone is, and realize that life is hard, and everyone’s comes with sacrifices, losses, and heartache that we often never see, we would better our society, not to mention humanity.
I’ve enjoyed watching Conan O’Brien bash NBC with their much deserved bashing over the past week or so, and especially after enjoying those moments I hate to see him get screwed out of his show. It’s going to be interesting to see who he signs on with next and where he goes from here. But it’s nice to see that he ended his show with class, and left an nice farewell message for his viewers.
All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particular of young people that watch. Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get, but if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.
Conan O’Brien
Chance is always powerful, let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.
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