Michael Winebrenner

“I’m helped by a gentle notion from Buddhist psychology, that there are “near enemies” to every great virtue—reactions that come from a place of care in us, and which feel right and good, but which subtly take us down an ineffectual path. Sorrow is a near enemy to compassion and to love. It is borne of sensitivity and feels like empathy. But it can paralyze and turn us back inside with a sense that we can’t possibly make a difference. The wise Buddhist anthropologist and teacher Roshi Joan Halifax calls this a “pathological empathy” of our age. In the face of magnitudes of pain in the world that come to us in pictures immediate and raw, many of us care too much and see no evident place for our care to go. But compassion goes about finding the work that can be done. Love can’t help but stay present”
― Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”
― Jean-Luc Picard

“Make a list of what is really important to you. Embody it.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are - Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life

“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news”
― John Muir