Silence can never render the heart’s true yearnings irrelevant or obsolete…it only makes it more torturous until fulfilled…if ever.
Cynically Jaded
Blog
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To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
Oneway
C.S. Lewis quotes (British Scholar and Novelist. 1898-1963)
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It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt – The Man In The Arena (1910)
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My Worth
“My worth cannot be defined by people, because people are fickle and selfish by nature. Nor can my worth be defined by my income because that is never guaranteed, nor always consistent. My worth is not defined by my friends or my family because they’re not in a position to judge my intentions or sincerity, only my actions. So my worth can only truly be judged by the One who sustains me, and in a smaller way, by me. My sense of self worth can only be established through selfless service to those around me. Whether my contribution is appreciated or not is not what defines me. But that I contribute, sacrifice and enrich other’s lives willingly is what had always brought joy to me, and has always given me reason to sleep peacefully at night, even if spurned by those that I serve the most.”
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Be less jaded…
Quick hit list to be less jaded:
- Smell the coffee in the morning, don’t just drink it because you need a boost
- Close your eyes and absorb the relief you feel the next time an unexpected breeze brushes past your face, or blows through your hair (If you have no hair to blow through, then you need this more than ever!)
- Appreciate the quirks of your partner, and remember what attracted you to them, rather than growing irritable and annoyed at the fact that they don’t always get what you’re saying
- Smile at yourself, even laugh if you really did something stupid enough to warrant it. You don’t have to have it together all the time.
- Be human
- Be unpredictable
- Be original
- Be true to yourself
- Be sincere
- Be you, and stop trying to be someone you think others will like
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Habitual Distractions
I reminisce about times gone by when things seemed easier, and life felt less complicated. But just as soon as I start taunting myself with these selective recollections, I realise that that is all it is. Selective memories of what felt good, or not so bad. If life really was simpler back then, it’s only because I lacked the realisation of what was really happening in my life and around me, and not because it was any easier.
The more I learn about myself, and especially others, the more complicated life gets. And since I can’t unlearn it all, I can’t see it getting any simpler either. That got me thinking about habits this morning. Hardly seems like there’s a connection between the two but I realised that if it weren’t for the blessing of habits, I’d constantly be distracted by the mundane. But when the mundane becomes habit, it frees up my conscious state of mind to focus on what’s really important. And when what’s really important is daunting and seemingly insurmountable, that’s when I slip into the state of morbidity that makes me yearn for the distractions of the mundane without the burden of real life attached to it.
Life, by its very definition, will not get easier. I can try to keep it less complicated, but the only way it can become simpler is if I grow oblivious to all that I’ve learnt already. I’d rather not. There’s too much beauty and wisdom that I paid a heavy price to experience and acquire that would be lost in the process.
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