Toa

“The foundation of a happy relationship (and life, really) is unconditional kindness. It’s synonymous with love, and maybe even more effective, because it shows you the action as opposed to the feeling or expectation.”
― Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

“But being imperfect is what makes us human,”
― Meghan Quinn, The Reason I Married Him

“People delay action once they know truth—and the interim between knowing and doing is the space where suffering thrives. Most of the time, it’s not about not knowing what to do (or not knowing who you are). It’s about the resistance between what’s right and what’s easy, what’s best in the long v. short term. We hear our instincts; we just don’t listen. This is the single most common root of discomfort: the space between knowing and doing. We’re culturally addicted to procrastination, but we’re also just as enamored by deflection. By not acting immediately, we think we’re creating space for the truth to shift, when we’re really only creating discomfort so that we can sense it more completely (though we’re suffering needlessly in the process).”
― Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

“If we could see souls instead of bodies, what would be beautiful?
What is the first thing people would know about you? What would you be
most afraid of them seeing? Who would you impress? Who would you
love?
What would you adjust as you walked past the mirror? What kind of work
would you be in? What would your goals be, how would you strive to be
better if what you collected in the bank or put on your body or attached next
to your name on a business card no longer affected what people saw?
Would you spend your time in gyms and stores or in libraries and
temples? Who would you let yourself fall in love with? What would your
“type” be? Tall, dark, and handsome or creative, kind, and self-aware?
What would happen if we could see people not as “bad,” but as…
blocked? If we could see the ways they’ve packed away their pain, or how
they hold a belief that keeps them away from being kind to others?
What would happen if we realized our bodies never wanted anything more
than to feel connected, and acted out on nothing more than their false ideas
of being separate, different, exiled, the odd one out, the almost-but-notgood-enough?
What would happen if we embraced our desire to play out and finagle
with our individualism, but eventually returned to the knowing that we are
all just energy fields? And where would we be if we realized that we were
all from the same one? What would happen if we realized we really weren’t
that different at all?”
― Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think