Deepika

“There were moments when I understood that there was nothing much I was going to understand or figure out. There was simply the present moment, awareness, impermanence, birdsong, love. There is no fixing this setup here. It seems broken and ruined at times, but it isn’t: it’s simply the nature of human life.”
― Anne Lamott, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

“Mimi talked about Mother, how at fifty, women wonder what they have done with their lives. What do they believe? What is of value? What should they do with the new freedom that is theirs now that their children are, for the most part, grown? “It’s a wonderful time in a woman’s life to really explore the possibilities. Your mother has changed a great deal over the years.” Mimi said. “And I think her cancer had a lot to do with it. During the early 1970s when many women were rethinking their roles within the home and confronting their own independence, I saw Diane focusing on her health, living, surviving, so she could raise you children. Along the way, she became much more philosophical. I admire how she protects her energy and understands her limitations.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

“Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I don't even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failure.
Because you are human beings, you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong. You'll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself - as I know you already have - in dark places, alone, and afraid.
What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places

“When I was your age, my father taught me how important it was to find something to celebrate each day. It didn't matter how small it was, or how long it lasted, but each simple pleasure needs to be marked. It can be...the first hawthorn blossom or the light on the path ahead through summer trees...the smile of a friend, or the silence at the end of a piece of music, as long as it is something precious and private to store up..they are moments of grace. My father called them "amulets of time".”
― James Runcie, The Great Passion