353

Work is the expression of our energy and our dreams. We owe those along for the journey the same dignity and connection we would like to receive in return.

— Seth Godin, Song of Significance

You've found the place to make a difference. So make it.

352

The most selfish thing you could do is not heed to the very advice you would give someone else in your same position. You are not an exception to the truth; you should be the exemplar of it.

Remember that. And remember your calling.

351

Work is not a means to live life; it is your life.

A majority of our waking hours are spent at work, so why squander it and why sabotage ourselves with the presumption that there must be a hard boundary between work and personal life? So often it is perceived as only a means of making money or gaining status so that we can do something else that might fulfill us (and we often fail at finding something else anyway). And so we keep postponing our happiness, we keep delaying our search for meaning and purpose, and we keep making excuses on why right now isn’t the right time to make a difference.

So many of us have been blessed to have already found something to do, and if your hand has found something to do, then do it will all of your heart. The people around you depend on it; if you don’t believe that, then you relinquish the right to complain when your workplace, your community, and your country, or humanity as a whole, isn’t the way you wanted it to be. We are each as much of the problem as we are part of the potential solution.

350

The practice of stoicism does not imply an absence of emotions; if anything, it implies an overabundance of emotion.

It is only valuable for those that require some means to navigate this world without having their minds crushed by the constant negative emotion that generated from the weight of their circumstances.

349

You just have to keep going; it’s the only way time will be on your side.

348

I was once foolish enough to believe knowledge would clarify, but some things are so gauzed behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it.

— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

We are as much feeling beings as we are thinking beings.

For as much as reason can save us from demise, from the waywardness of our circumstances and our emotions, it can, in its obstinance and confinement within its own system, just as easily hinder the will to change and to adapt, or worse, shield us from what could be our richest and most profound experiences or realizations in this life.

347

Always hope over fear.

We can’t predict the future anyway, so we might as well not be miserable in the meanwhile.

346

Tired? Yes.

Dejected? Hopeless? Directionless? Not at all.

You should be glad that your solution is not complicated; just rest, and move on.

Nothing more to think about.

345

We deceive and betray ourselves every time we presume there is a better moment to celebrate, to be grateful, or to find fulfillment. Every set of challenges that you face now will inevitably be replaced by another set of challenges, and if it in any way follows the pattern of the human condition, those future challenges will be even more difficult and even more numerous. Not only that, but our minds, our corporeal flesh degrades by the day.

With how fast life passes us by in our perception of it,

with how wayward the circumstances of this world are,

and with how endless our suffering and toil is,

how can now—yes, right now—not be the best time to be happy?

344

Embrace the spontaneity of life; it is the only reason you are able to escape the confines of your mind.