Peacejanz

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“I used to feel I could hide inside my practice, that I could simply sit and contemplate the raging anger of a place like this, seeking inner peace through prayers of compassion. But now I believe love and compassion are things to extend to others. It's a dangerous adventure to share them in a place like S.Q. Yet I see now that we become better people if we can touch a hardened soul, bring joy into someone's life, or just be an example for others, instead of hiding behind our silence.”
― Jarvis Jay Masters, Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row

“I had accepted beatings, loneliness, and near-starvation as normal because those things had helped me to survive. Now when these women undressed me, it felt like they were removing a shield that had become a part of me. As they peeled off layer after layer, I began to feel my age and started crying. With my tears I shed each fiber of responsibility I had in caring for my sisters and brother. I was finally being cared for as a child, and so the child inside me opened wide.”
― Jarvis Jay Masters, That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous