Words I saved, read, wrote down, and savored last week. From courageous steps being closer than we think, to finding heaven in each other, to obtaining the truth like gold, to rich obstacles and an Artist’s prayer.

Cortney and I are gearing up for a move to Brooklyn over the next two weeks, while still juggling jobs and hitting deadlines (bruhhhh). The next few days will be rather chaotic, but, I’m consistently reminded that the fruit is in the labor and the prize is in the process.

Happy Monday, friends.
—Nneka

“It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: which is why we so often prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities clouded by fear, the horizon safely in the distance, the essay longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.”

“To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt.”
—David Whyte

“Hell is other people…is only one side of the coin. The other side which no one seems to mention, is also ‘Heaven is each other.’ Hell is separateness, incommunicability, self-centeredness, lust for power, for riches, for fame. Heaven on the other hand is very simple, and very hard: caring about your fellow beings. And that’s possible on a sustained basis only in collectivity.”
—Jean-Paul Sartre

Screenshot from my friend, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo’s, Instagram stories. BIG gems.

"People usually think that progress consists in the increase of knowledge, in the improvement of life, but that isn't so. Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life. The truth is always accessible to a man...because a man's soul is a divine spark, the truth itself. It's only a matter of removing from this divine spark, everything that obscures it. Progress consists, not in the increase of truth, but in freeing it from its wrappings. The truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn't gold.”
—Leo Tolstoy

“To be an artist, you don’t have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It’s just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.”
—Viggo Mortensen

“As I desire to do only that which is good and constructive, life-giving and life-expressing, the Divine Abundance forever manifests in my endeavors. Therefore I know that I shall prosper in everything I do. I know that I exist in limitless possibility and that the infinite Good is right where I am and active in my experience.”
—Ernest Holmes