Words I Need Last Week 8/1
Don't bend. Don't water it down.
Words I saved, read, wrote down, and savored last week. From following your most intense obsessions mercilessly, to being the decisive element in your life, to creativity being a verb, to the miracle of living this day, and another, and maybe still another.
Happy Monday (and new month!), friends.
—Nneka
“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
―Franz Kafka
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.”
—Haim Ginott
“Why do you run around looking for the truth? Be still, and there it is—in the mountain, in the pine, in yourself.”
—Lao Tzu, “Conscious Arrival”
“There's no such thing as a creative type. As if creative people can just show up and make stuff up. As if it were that easy. I think people need to be reminded that creativity is a verb. A very time-consuming verb. It's about taking an idea in your head and transforming that idea into something real. and that's always going to be a long and difficult process. If you're doing it right, it's going to feel like work.
—Milton Glaser
“Every time you talk about reaching everyone, that you imagine changing “the world,” you should fine yourself a nickel. It’s almost impossible to reach everyone. The most popular podcast in the world has reached one out of every 2,000 people on the planet. By a rounding error, that’s not nearly everyone, in fact, it’s essentially no one. The same is true for the most popular salsa, the bestselling writer and the leading non-profit. You’re going to reach virtually no one. That’s okay. The question is: which no one?
Your smallest viable audience holds you to account.
It forces a focus and gives you nowhere to hide.
But first, you need to choose...”
—Seth Godin
“Humans produce verbal language by controlling the flow of air over the voicebox and vocal cords. Our words are carried on a wave of breath, the same breath that feeds the cells of our body with oxygen from the moment we are born until the day we die. Pause to take this in for a moment: we use the same physiological process to speak as we do to sustain our life energy.”
—Oren Jay Sofer
“Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of the single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.”
—Mary Oliver
Thank you for your words.