Love is the lodestone of life, the great and supreme reality... the highest gift of heaven, the greatest good on earth, the treasure of all our search. While hate kills, love renews and invigorates. As love is the greatest healing power, no one feels whole without it. Love need not be confined to only a few, but can be extended to many without losing the love of a few. In fact, when love becomes more complete it will take in a large and larger territory and in doing so experience a greater degree of livingness.
To rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless outward need to reward itself with established goals. To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right.
~ David Whyte in CONSOLATIONS: THE SOLACE, NOURISHMENT AND UNDERLYING MEANING OF EVERYDAY WORDS
Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others.
Beginning well or beginning poorly, what is
important is simply to begin....Beginning is difficult,
and our procrastination is a fine ever-present
measure of our reluctance in taking that first
close-in, courageous step to reclaiming our
happiness...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...
