Christopher Kijowski

“In life, it’s not about how hard you get hit. It’s about how many times you get back up and how hard you’re willing to keep fighting for your dreams.”
― Rudy Ruettiger, Rudy: My Story

“Perhaps Nickel was the very afterlife that awaited him, with a White House down the hill and an eternity of oatmeal and an infinite brotherhood of broken boys.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“From this new place lessons come, or perhaps realizations. The first is that most of my adult life I have not been listening fully. I only listened long enough to determine whether the speaker’s ideas matched my own. If they did not, I would stop listening and my mind would race ahead to compose an argument against what I believed the speaker’s idea or position to be, which I would interject at the first opportunity. Giving myself permission not to speak, not to attack some idea or position, also gives me permission to listen fully. Giving myself this permission gives the speaker permission to speak fully their idea or position without fear of rebuttal in a way that I could not have imagined.”
― John Francis, Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking. 17 Years of Silence.

“I fell in love with a fluffy white and black cat that wandered onto the monastery property. She was so beautiful. I took excellent care of her. I used to spend hours pulling the Velcro-like burrs that got stuck in her long fur when she came to visit my hermitage. The monastery eventually decided she was better off living with a neighbor instead of us. That meant I would never see her again. When I heard the news, I became quite sad. The day she was picked up by her new owners and gone for good was one of the hardest days of my training. That night, I sat in meditation. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. When the bell rang to finish my meditation, I asked a question, “How do you let go of someone you love?” The answer that appeared was, “Love everyone.” I’ll never forget the magnitude of that response. My heart opened up beyond its broken capacity to include all of those around me. The feeling was so overwhelming that it was impossible to experience loss. Love everyone.”
― Alex Mill, A Shift to Love: Zen Stories and Lessons by Alex Mill