Kathleen H

“It’s in the nature of being finite that every choice comes with some sort of consequences, because at any instant, you can only pick one path, and must deal with the repercussions of not picking any of the others.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

“Whatever choice you make, so long as you make it in the spirit of facing the consequences, the result will be freedom in the only sense that finite humans ever get to enjoy it. Not freedom from limitation, which is something we unfortunately never get to experience, but freedom in limitation.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

“you’re pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

“When I was sent to rehab for a year and a half at the age of sixteen, I was able to crawl out of the addiction but found myself just anxious to be thought of as the poster child of a “good client” as a substitute for genuine self-worth. Even a very real experience of religious faith was hijacked by my need to fill this hole. After becoming a missionary and attending seminary, I was quietly ashamed to discover that a majority of my motivation for doing so was again to become a person who was seen as good enough by those around me. I realized in my late twenties that I’d been playing out the same pattern over and over without realizing it: looking for a role to fill that would finally make me worthy of kindness and love and belonging. When I viewed getting my life together as a way for trying to atone for the sin of falling apart, I stayed stuck in a shame-fueled cycle of performance, perfectionism, and failure.”
― K.C. Davis, How to Keep House While Drowning