Rachel

“Having a birthday is like reaching a higher peak on a mountain. Pause to admire the view; reflect on how far you have come.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year

“There comes a time in every story when the hero finally gets everything they ever wanted. And that's usually when the music swells and the credits roll or the last page turns or we just flip the channel. I believe there's a reason for that.

We don't want to spend too much time with somebody once they've gotten everything they've ever wanted. They become insufferable. They become unsympathetic. They start using words like whom properly in a sentence. There's no more mountain left for them to climb, so we're out.

We're underdog people. Get out of here with your all my dream already came true nonsense. Just take your football and go home, Rudy. Go live your happy life and let us be. We're already on to the next unlikely story.

But what if success was where the real trouble began?

What if we got everything we ever wanted, only to find out it doesn't change a thing about not liking this skin we have to do life in, this dirt still caked under our fingernails. That once we go home and tuck ourselves between the cool cotton sheets, where it's just us and the darkness settled in, it hasn't changed a thing about how easily we can lay our head down and fall asleep at night.
...
The hero, it turns out, is flawed. Deeply, deeply, deeply flawed.

And no amount of success is going to undo that. No relentless pursuit of more is going to erase what was missing. It's going to take digging in and doing the hard work of healing if there's any hope of changing all that. but how do e you gather up the nerve when it already feels so damaged? And is that the kind of story anybody will ever care about?
...
We don't really make movies about what happened after someone got everything they ever wanted.

About what happens when the hero at last has to come face-to-face with what no amount of success will ever fix.

But that's the story we're living now.”
― Mary Marantz, Dirt: Growing Strong Roots in What Makes the Broken Beautiful

“We are not born with hard hearts. We are born with soft and tender hearts that, more often than not, are mishandled and consequently broken. The pain is always harsher than expected when each fragment turns to stone. So we pile them high to form a wall of protection around ourselves, determined never to experience such terrible pain again. That is how hearts come to be hardened. Ironically, our refusal to dismantle the wall is how and why we continue to suffer.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year

“There’s an old saying: “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure