Michael Michael

326

Time to rest? Or time to push?

Which is worse? Being crippled from exhaustion or injury? Or having fallen behind because of laziness and complacency?

We don’t know our limits until we actually reach them. Not only that, but the limit will differ depending on the day and the circumstances, and depending on the state of our mind, our heart, and our body.

There is no easy answer, and we should not want it to be easy because we perpetually need this tension between what is possible or impossible; it is all that gives us wonder, and all that gives us meaning.

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Michael Michael

325

The need to constantly remind ourselves to do the right thing—what we might call mindfulness—is only necessary because there are parts of ourselves that either we cannot change or, perhaps, should not change. We do not need to tell our mind to stop thinking, or tell our heart to stop feeling.

We need not transform ourselves and eviscerate our identity every time we make mistakes or go astray. We are who we are; there always will exist parts of it that need to be fixed, parts that should not be fixed, and parts that cannot be fixed. To live our best life, we must be able to discern between them with clarity.

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Michael Michael

324

In all the things we do not have gratitude for remains either apathy or bitterness.

If there was any choice that truly mattered, it is this one.

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Michael Michael

323

One of the greatest fallacies of the human mind is in believing that one step, among millions of steps, doesn’t matter.

Logically, as it reflects the nature of our universe and the cascading nature of cause and effect, every step matters just as much as the next—all equally inseparable, indelible, and inevitable.

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Michael Michael

322

While I have an extremely open mind, merely being open does not warrant desire.

When I have already found my own peace and my own internal joy, I stand to gain nothing from desiring more and more.

I should no longer be afraid to say that enough is enough.

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Michael Michael

321

Detach yourself from desire. You don’t need anyone. And you don’t need anything.

Remind yourself that losing everything you have now might be, above all, a relief. Remind yourself that you have the capacity to see beyond merely how you feel. Remind yourself of how far you’ve come—to be among the few to reach a point in your existence where nothing more that happens in this life is a mystery, a surprise, or a source of misery. You understand the human condition such that you no longer have to wander aimlessly; now, I can merely wander, for the sake of wandering.

But use this not as an escape, nor an excuse not to try. All this is to remind yourself to not be afraid—to not be chained to the ephemeral, to our tenuous, transitory definitions of what is important. Against all odds, you are blessed to have the right mindset, and the right heart. Do not let yourself, under any circumstance, let your mind or your heart become mired in trivialities and the banal; you’ve moved far past that now, and that is not what you are called to do.

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Michael Michael

320

What matters is not if you fail or if you succeed; there are often factors out of our control that determine the outcome. What matters is if you try, and how you try.

Embrace success, but lest you forget that you need to fail in order to learn, or to gain any amount of resilience or perseverance in your spirit. And if these insipid, nonsensical, banal, and vapid struggles are capable of deteriorating its integrity, you ought to be concerned for who you will be when the world has called you to do something that actually matters.

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Michael Michael

319

To fear loss is to fear change. We can grieve, lament, and adorn respect to what has past, but we should never become attached to it.

Whether or not there is something to learn, we continue on regardless. It is not a source of grief; it is a stark reminder that nothing is truly ours in this world, and that we cannot understand the true purpose of any event until the conclusion of the matter.

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Michael Michael

318

I can now forego hatred and bitterness; why brew animosity towards the essential nature of others, or myself, when we didn’t choose who we fundamentally are? Our actions are not a mystery, a surprise, or anomalies in the course of the universe.

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Michael Michael

317

The most freeing thing I ever did in my life was realizing that there is no free will.

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