366

You keep forgetting that you can be happy now.

You keep forgetting how far you’ve come.

You keep forgetting what you’re capable of.

You keep forgetting that you walk your own path in life—not that of others.

You keep forgetting that you can do the right thing—right now.

You keep forgetting your calling—what really matters to you.

You didn’t come all this way to squander your life on the inconsequential, to exhaust your heart on those that don’t walk to same journey as you, to make excuses for why you can’t improve, to settle for the status quo, and to boast about all the things that you do not practice yourself.

Concentrate.

Focus.

Remember.

And, if nothing else, have gratitude and love in it all.

365

We don’t have to learn everything the hard way. We don’t always have to endure crises in order to learn our lessons. The essence of mindfulness is to be able to learn in the absence of failure; it is having the courage, discernment, and compassion for the self and for others to realize that you could be wrong even when nothing is going wrong—that some degree of uncertainty always exists in this world that we can never fully understand. It is to recognize the perpetual threat of complacency—of a false sense of security, of a false hope that things won’t go wrong, when they always do.

364

We learn to detach our actions from the outcome because our expectations—our calculus of what can happen or what cannot happen—are deeply flawed. We so often overestimate our ability to comprehend an incomprehensible world.

Do something because it is right in and of itself—not because it will produce an outcome that may or may not exist.

363

It could very well be something is destined to fail, but none of us want to confront the possibility that us believing that is what causes it to happen in the first place.

362

There are no absolutes in this world, but to be able to make decisions, we must be absolute in our minds.

361

There's so many people counting on you. You can't give up now.

And if you fail? If you get humiliated? If you embarrass yourself? So fucking what.

If you are at peace with the notion of death, then you can be at peace with this ephemeral nonsense.

360

To do our best in this life, to make things better, and to fight the battles worth fighting—often requires that we lose ourselves in the process—to be ever-consumed by a relentless desire, to be pressed by an exigent need to see change in the world, to forget about everything but making progress in this tireless pursuit.

Is it the right time to be patient? Or the right time to be desperate?

Do we choose to be happy now? Or will we fall into complacency?

Is what we have now enough? Or have we just fallen short of finding what really matters to us?

How much of our lives are we willing to let pass us by in service of this pursuit?

The questions never end, and the answers seem to never come. It is what makes life beautiful, this uncertainty, and precisely what makes it miserable.

359

Two things you should never postpone: to do your duty, and to love.

Or perhaps, they were the same thing all along.

358

How is it that you are afraid of making mistakes, yet so fixated on self-improvement?

Your growth depends on failure. You need to stop latching onto this absurd, idealized version of yourself that, for whatever reason, you absolved from the very things that bring you meaning in life.

357

Most of our conversations are imperfect. They're all going to have their fair share of nervousness, awkwardness, and disagreement. But guess what—it's not the end of the world.

Why do we have this unrealistic expectation that everything must go perfectly in an imperfect world with imperfect human beings? We can muster up the courage and the confidence to express our genuine feelings face to face. We can speak honestly about where we're trying to go and what we're trying to be. We can be emotionally mature and self-aware enough to tell each other in good faith about how we feel, or if something isn't working out, and not take personal offense to it or sulk.

But instead we hide behind facades of nonchalance, we try all we can to latch onto our pride, and we forget that all we're trying to do at the end of the day is help each other along in this journey through this chaotic existence.