Tanya

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”
― Aldous Huxley , Island

“Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.”
― Lorrie Moore, Self-Help

“Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”
― Rumi

“What are you thinking?” She asks.
-That you are beautiful. That not everyone could see it. I almost became the kind of person who could not.”
― Mary Gaitskill, Veronica