Tarek

“Here's to the kids.

The kids who would rather spend their night with a bottle of coke & Patrick or Sonny playing on their headphones than go to some vomit-stained high school party.
Here's to the kids whose 11:11 wish was wasted on one person who will never be there for them.
Here's to the kids whose idea of a good night is sitting on the hood of a car, watching the stars.
Here's to the kids who never were too good at life, but still were wicked cool.
Here's to the kids who listened to Fall Out boy and Hawthorne Heights before they were on MTV...and blame MTV for ruining their life.
Here's to the kids who care more about the music than the haircuts.
Here's to the kids who have crushes on a stupid lush.
Here's to the kids who hum "A Little Less 16 Candles, A Little More Touch Me" when they're stuck home, dateless, on a Saturday night.
Here's to the kids who have ever had a broken heart from someone who didn't even know they existed.
Here's to the kids who have read The Perks of Being a Wallflower & didn't feel so alone after doing so.
Here's to the kids who spend their days in photobooths with their best friend(s).
Here's to the kids who are straight up smartasses & just don't care.
Here's to the kids who speak their mind.
Here's to the kids who consider screamo their lullaby for going to sleep.
Here's to the kids who second guess themselves on everything they do.
Here's to the kids who will never have 100 percent confidence in anything they do, and to the kids who are okay with that.
Here's to the kids.
This one's not for the kids,
who always get what they want,
But for the ones who never had it at all.
It's not for the ones who never got caught,
But for the ones who always try and fall.
This one's for the kids who didnt make it,
We were the kids who never made it.
The Overcast girls and the Underdog Boys.
Not for the kids who had all their joys.
This one's for the kids who never faked it.
We're the kids who didn't make it.
They say "Breaking hearts is what we do best,"
And, "We'll make your heart be ripped of your chest"
The only heart that I broke was mine,
When I got My Hopes up too too high.
We were the kids who didnt make it.
We are the kids who never made it.”
― Pete Wentz

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Herman Hesse, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte

“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.”
― Orson F. Whitney

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
― Richard P. Feynman