Dreams and disappointment, by Martha Beck

"My favorite story about handling disappointments comes from the India guru Amrit Desai. He had a collection of very rare crystals that he'd accumulated over many years.

One day his cleaning lady knocked over a display case and smashed most of the irreplaceable crystals.

When she tearfully pointed out her mistake, expecting a violent reaction, the guru shrugged and told her "Those things were for my joy, not for my misery."

Your dreams are for your joy; even if they lie crushed on the ground, you need not make them responsible for misery. If you raise your eyes from the shards you'll find more dreams all around, and many of them can come true.

As Marcel Proust wrote, "If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time."

~Martha Beck

"My work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished," by Mary Oliver

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still
not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is
my work,
Which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.

~ Mary Oliver

Happiness, by Abraham Hicks

"Tell everyone you know: 'My happiness depends on me so you're off the hook.'" Abraham Hicks

When you are old, by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

~William Butler Yeats

Leadership, by Ken Burns

"Planet Jupiter"

"We choose leaders abysmally today. We expect perfection, and when we don't find it we lament the absence of heros. But heroism, by the very definition that came down from the Greeks, is a negotiation between strengths and weaknesses. Maybe I'm being glib when I say that people like the Roosevelts and Lincoln couldn't make it past the Iowa caucuses, but it would be very difficult for them to succeed in this environment."

~Ken Burns