the lessons of joy and sorrow

Photo by Jeremy Chan

"It is only when one feels joy or sorrow that one knows anything about himself, and only by joy or sorrow is he instructed what to seek and what to shun." ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For Strong Women, by Marge Piercy

A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.

~Marge Piercy, "For Strong Women"

It's the only compass you've been given.

See original on Flickr

 "Whatever you do, make sure you're doing it out of desire. It's the only compass you've been given in this world, and you can trust it. It may not lead you where you thought you were going, but it will never lead you astray." Nicole Daedone

burnout

Photo by Amy Veeninga (original at Flickr)

"Everytime you say “YES” to something you don’t want to do, you will resent people, you will do a bad job, you will have less energy for the things you were doing a good job on. ... Every time you say “Yes” to something you don’t want, your fire starts to go away. You will get burnt out. ... Instead, igniting the fire on the inside burns a light so fierce it can’t be burnt out. You will become a beacon, a light that attracts abundance, instead of a flickering fame that is eventually smothered." James Altucher

Love the questions themselves

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke