Stefan Jonasson

“My unhappiness is at best inane when compared to the ruins and dust that lie outside my window.”
― Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, Hotel Silence

“I remember one time we were walking into a grocery store and an old man was ringing a bell for the Salvation Army. I asked my dad if we could give him some money and he told me no, that he works hard for his money and he wasn’t about to let me give it away. He said it isn’t his fault that other people don’t want to work. He spent the whole time we were in the grocery store telling me about how people take advantage of the government and until the government stops helping those people by giving them handouts, the problem won’t ever go away… I believed him. That was three years ago and all this time I thought homeless people were homeless because they were lazy or drug addicts or just didn’t want to work like other people. But now I know that’s not true. Sure, some of what he said was true to an extent, but he was using the worst-case scenarios. Not everyone is homeless because they choose to be. They’re homeless because there isn’t enough help to go around. And people like my father are the problem. Instead of helping others, people use the worst-case scenarios to excuse their own selfishness and greed.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

“WE ARE A RIVER Our life has not been an ascent
up one side of a mountain and down the other.
We did not reach a peak,
only to decline and die.
We have been as drops of water,
born in the ocean and sprinkled on the earth
in a gentle rain.
We became a spring,
and then a stream,
and finally a river flowing deeper and stronger,
nourishing all it touches
as it nears its home once again. Don’t accept the modern myths of aging.
You are not declining.
You are not fading away into uselessness.
You are a sage,
a river at its deepest
and most nourishing.
Sit by a riverbank sometime
and watch attentively as the river
tells you of your life.”
― William Martin, The Sage's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for the Second Half of Life

“The people we surround ourselves with either raise or lower our standards. They either help us to become the best version of ourselves or encourage us to become lesser versions of ourselves. We become like our friends. No man becomes great on his own. No woman becomes great on her own. The people around them help to make them great.

We all need people in our lives who raise our standards, remind us of our essential purpose, and challenge us to become the best version of ourselves.”
― Matthew Kelly, The Rhythm of Life: Living Every Day with Passion and Purpose