It’s a strange feeling being surrounded by people who seem to have a lot to say about everything when you have very little to say about anything.
“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. Of course it is understandable that we seek happiness and avoid unlucky and disagreeable chances but the more you deliberately seek happiness the more sure you are not to find it. It is therefore far better to take things as they come along, with patience and equanimity.”
— Carl Jung
What an extraordinary morning. Seeing the actual sun for the first time in what feels like many weeks that the sky has been obscured by thick cloud. Wow.
The specific qualities of experience pale in comparison to the simple presence of everything, the fact that anything is happening at all.
I wholly disapprove of what you say—and will defend to the death your right to say it.
— Evelyn Beatrice Hall via Scattershot
Never confuse your own character and personality with those of the society and culture in which you find yourself.
My favourite Prince anecdote comes from an interview when he was asked what Rolling Stones song he wished he’d written, to which answered ‘Miss You’. He was also asked which U2 song he wished he’d written to which he responded that he could have written all of them but wouldn’t want to write any of them! Ouch! 🤣
Been revisiting Prince for the first times in ages. For my money, throughout the six year period from ‘82 to ‘88 and the six albums – 1999, Purple Rain, Around The World In a Day, Parade, Sign O’ The Times and Lovesexy – he was simply untouchable. Such a monumentally brilliant body of work that no one has come even close to. Surely the Miles Davis of pop.
Really savouring Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs. Great poet that she is, she manages to convey the human universal through the particularities of dogs.
“Awakening is highly overrated. And it is credited with a lot more than it is actually responsible for. Far more powerful than awakening, is the simple and organic process of maturing, which is perpetual. And with maturity comes the realization that suffering is nothing more than an attitude we take towards the vicissitudes of our own life.”
— Shiv Sengupta
I’m finding it enormously freeing and conducive to a profound lightness of being to not try and hold onto and keep… well, anything really. What’s gone is gone and there’s always plenty more on the way…
If one is in the business of finding answers to life then, if they exist at all, they surely reside within the full, unconditional embrace and affirmation of whatever is happening right here right now.
The best advice ever: There’s what you should do, there’s what you shouldn’t do and there’s what you’re going to do anyway.
Not living anywhere near London anymore I’m really excited to have got tickets to see the National Theatre Live broadcast of Dr. Strangelove in our little local cinema!
