Ahmed

“To preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary to set fire to a library. To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, banks, food. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Let's not be a generation of fathers who push this crisis off to the next generation. Let's be fathers who release blessing and not brokenness -- favor and not curses. Resolve in your spirit to do this with intentionality and focus.”
― Jon Tyson, The Intentional Father: A Practical Guide to Raise Sons of Courage and Character

“The function of mindfulness is, first, to recognize the suffering and then to take care of the suffering. The work of mindfulness is first to recognize the suffering and second to embrace it. A mother taking care of a crying baby naturally will take the child into her arms without suppressing, judging it, or ignoring the crying. Mindfulness is like that mother, recognizing and embracing suffering without judgement.

So the practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather to cradle it with a lot of tenderness. When a mother embraces her child, that energy of tenderness begins to penetrate into the body of the child. Even if the mother doesn't understand at first why the child is suffering and she needs some time to find out what the difficulty is, just her acto f taking the child into her arms with tenderness can alreadby bring relief. If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while we breathe mindfully, there is relief already.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

“There may be no advice given to young creative types more often than "Stay hungry." Hunger is encouraged by commencement speakers, noted as a requirement in job listings, looked back on fondly by one-time strivers now on the far side of their golden years. Hunger is everything because its nothing--not yet-- just raw promise, one lack that may eclipse others: talent, pedigree, luck. Like sharks, the hungry must always keep moving, hunting, killing, "killing it." We assure the hungry that they are poised to go far--over and beyond the bodies of the frightened and dull and easily sated. At the end of the day they will stand smiling, jaws bloodied, still wanting more.

When we talk about hunger this way -- as shorthand for a certain noble stripe of ambition--we tend to obscure its roots in our bodies, our biology. Even in this strange sliver of the world where food is ample to the point of thread, hunger remains a real, animal sensation. Every few hours our bodies rumble with discomfort and we are expected to soothe them, whether or not we understand or trust the nature of their want. Perhaps this hunger is honest, or perhaps it's just that you smelled the cookies baking or you got stood up or cut off or side-eyed or just happened to see the clock hit eleven thirty, a time you were hungry before. Hunger confuses the needs of our minds with the needs of our bellies. Hunger lies like a child.

But then, whether or not you give into your hunger, even if you give it nothing at all, it always slinks away; but then, it always returns. It is a fundamental condition. We seem to forget this when we talk about the appetites of the young. "Stay hungry," we tell them, as if they have been drafted into some cannibal army and must devour their own to have any hope of survival. "Stay hungry," we tell them, as if they have any choice at all.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living