From Lord of the Rings - wisdom to ponder today

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

this too shall pass...what comes next is uncertain, but we can be assured that this too shall pass

time is fleeting but seems endless when change brings discomfort and inconvenience (for some, hunger and suffering for many others) 

Yet life is for living, not waiting for things we don't like to pass and what life was like in our memories can never be recreated.

Let us go forward with courage my friends and ease our fingers loose from the death grip on our past. Let's take a step into creating our future (we can plug our nose and close our eyes as we step into thin air, the exhilaration alone is worth the step, then we can trust that our imagination is ready with a parachute, it always does! This means to let go of striving for the illusion of security to follow a path that makes us grow)

If one needs a starting point we can never go wrong by being grateful for whatever we have, no matter how insignificant it seems, and starting there ...

Check out this 5 minute youtube of some examples...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaqZVBFsum8

... more wisdom from Tolkien ... we are all part of the same world and what affects some of us affects us all.

“The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Cheers

Jeanne

Arnold S and Lady G and Zeno of Citium

"Man conquers the world by conquering himself."
Zeno of Citium

"You can have results or excuses. Not both"
"When people said "We never want to look like you" Arnold replied "Don't worry, you never will"
"The worst thing I could be is the same as everybody else. I would hate that"
Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Well, that's your opinion, isn't it? And I'm not about to waste my time trying to change it.”
“Don't you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can't be exactly who you are.”
“I am the excuse to explore your identity. To be exactly who you are and to feel unafraid. To not judge yourself, to not hate yourself.”
Lady Gaga

There is no beginning and no end. We never 'arrive' at a peak where the struggle is over. To live loud is to continually challenge ourselves to be better. To 'conquer' ourselves is to consciously go into the wilderness of our fears and face them. 

Strength is not nesting in a comfortable cave where we fight to retain these comforts at the expense of the rest of the world. We are hanging on desperately to the paradigm that this comfortable cave is our birthright. We have no birthright, our lives are a gift not something we earned. Everyone of us is a gift. 

Those who have done the work to live their passion and stay focused on their dreams are living examples of Zeno's quote. This is how we live in gratitude for the gift of life, how we honour it and ourselves and conquer the world.