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“What does it take to get us to stand quietly, like somebody under a clear midnight sky, taking all of it in, stilled by the staggering pitch and pull of life? Things going well doesn't seem to help with this. Good fortune isn't persuasive on this matter, and it rarely gives people pause. It's when the news isn't good news; that's usually the time you find the limits of what you can bear to know. Then, maybe only then, you might be able to see that the waves of what you believed and did and held off from doing will still have their ripples, long after you're done. They outlast you. And this is tremendous news. When you are still enough for long enough, sometimes the river, the boat, and the waves and eddies-all of it-can turn into what you mean when you say, "My Life." If you can do that, you can change things. Your life becomes a little friendlier to the world, to what the world needs from you. It becomes a little friendlier to the endings of things too.”
― Stephen Jenkinson, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

“We never know self-realization.

We are two abysses -- a well staring at the sky.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Seeing the end of your life is the birth of your ability to love being alive. It is the cradle of your love of life.”
― Stephen Jenkinson, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

“How might people in some other village or town rise up each morning? What does being alive mean to them? It isn't likely that they wake up every day expecting to die. They likely want to live at least as much as we do, and they want this for each other too. Experience has taught them not that life is cruel, random, arbitrary, unjust. Experience has taught them that life is unlikely, everything considered. Waking up each day, and having your children do so, is not written in the stars, not an entitlement, far from inevitable. It is not even the fair trade meritocratic consequence of being careful and living right. For all that, waking up each day is a gift. It is a gift that is not reward for playing by the rules. It is a gift from the Gods, giving each living person the capacity not just to go on, but to go on as if he or she has been gifted, to go on in gratitude and wonder that all the things of the world that keep them alive have continued while they slept. Wonder, awe, and a feeling of being on the receiving end for now of something mysteriously good: These are antidotes to depression.”
― Stephen Jenkinson, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul