Words I Needed Last Week 9/12
Words I Needed Last Week 9/12
Your limitations are man-made.
A few sentences I’ve collected, chewed on, and digested this September. On when our real journey begins, self-imposed limitations, love, writing, and loyalty.
“There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
—Wendell Berry
“Your limitations are man-made.
Your mother told you to do it this way.
Your father told you to do it that way.
Your grandparents told you about their way.
Coaches told you to follow instructions to play.
Teachers told you to follow the rules to pass.
Jobs told you to follow commands to get paid.
Partners told you to act like this to be loved.
You can make it decades before you really stop and think about what you do and why.
You can go your whole life thinking YOU decided to be a certain way and never question it.
You should question it. You should question why you’ve put limitations in places that may not make sense.
You should evaluate whether or not your beliefs and behaviors are based on a true sense of what is right or wrong, or out of a myopic concern of how others will perceive you.
Reflect. There is a job you should change, a friendship you should end, a relationship you should leave, a passion you should pursue, but you don’t because you think you’re afraid of change, or you don’t want to be the “bad guy,” you don’t want to encounter struggle or doubt. And while that may all be true, simply ask yourself, “where did that come from?”
Were you born with these thoughts and ideas or did someone tell you this is how to do it? When your race is run, will you be satisfied with how you chose to run it?”
—Conversations with Cortney
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even 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. To love is to be vulnerable.”
―C.S. Lewis, “The Four Loves”
now I’ve always written in a
selfish way, that is, to please
myself.
by writing things down I have
been better able to
live with them.
—Charles Bukowski, “The Last Night of the Earth Poems”
“I think I'd probably tell you that it's easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.”
―William Gibson, “Idoru”