373

There is no honor or courage in merely having an opinion; to desire and seek truth, however, is among the bravest things we can do.

372

Nothing new, and nothing unexpected.

But perhaps that's why it seems so unbearable.

371

If you are willing to lose everything, why are you so distressed if you lose one thing?

370

There is far too much suffering—far too much pain, loneliness, and death in this world to be complacent about it.

This doesn’t imply that you must saturate your life with suffering as well; it simply means that you don’t discourage or shame others trying to make a difference. It means you must be cognizant of the consequences of your actions. It means that you should seek truth and help others find it as well.

We’re all called to do different things in life, but one thing persists across personality and identity, across time and space—to make things better. Even for just a short while.

369

Personality is endlessly fascinating, but at the end of the day, the only thing that truly matters is character.

368

In every moment, we are dying.

In every moment, we are changing.

The corporeal body gradually dies to the inexorable current of time, and our identity—who we are in this strange mental construct of ours—is ever changing, ever dissipating into the whirlwind of our circumstances.

Who you are now becomes who you were by the second. It’s easy to realize these changes in the self, especially so if we are mindful enough to realize it without being pried from our complacency, but it is entirely a different challenge to see it in others. And so treat everyone that you know as if they were a stranger; approach your friends, your family, and your coworkers with humility, providing them with the benefit of the doubt— to come to every interaction without the crass assumption that they were the same person you’ve always assumed them to be, and instead with a hopeful vision, to merely desire to learn who someone is, at that very moment despite the fleeting nature of time, and not let every interaction be imbued by who they were.

367

“What would you still do, even if you knew you would fail?”

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.