"To Love at all is to be vulnerable"

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

C.S. Lewis 

- Perhaps one day.

Comics from here.

Forrest Gump

"There is only so much fortune a man really needs - and the rest is for showin' off"

"Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

Forrest Gump (1994)

Life is

"Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it."

Charles Swindoll

"Where the Road Ends"

The Dish writes about Where the Road Ends  from the Atlantic

"Using Google Street View, we 'drove' thousands of miles around the world to find places where the road ends. Our virtual travels took us from the fields of Italy to the fjords of Norway and the tip of South Africa. This video was inspired by Alan Taylor's In Focus photo gallery, "The Ends of the Road," in the Atlantic Magazine."

Amateurs vs. Experts

"Amateurs are content at some point to let their efforts become bottom-up operations. After about fifty hours of training — whether in skiing or driving — people get to that “good-enough” performance level, where they can go through the motions more or less effortlessly. They no longer feel the need for concentrated practice, but are content to coast on what they’ve learned. No matter how much more they practice in this bottom-up mode, their improvement will be negligible.

The experts, in contrast, keep paying attention top-down, intentionally counteracting the brain’s urge to automatize routines. They concentrate actively on those moves they have yet to perfect, on correcting what’s not working in their game, and on refining their mental models of how to play the game, or focusing on the particulars of feedback from a seasoned coach. Those at the top never stop learning: if at any point they start coasting and stop such smart practice, too much of their game becomes bottom-up and their skills plateau."

-  from Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by psychologist and journalist Daniel Goleman, In "Debunking the Myth of the  10,000 - Hour s Rule: What actually Takes Place to Reach Genius-Level Excellence" in Brain Pickings, 

The Half-Finished Heaven

The Half-Finished Heaven

Despondency breaks off its course.

Anguish breaks off its course.
The vulture breaks off its flight.

The eager light streams out,
even the ghosts take a draught.

And our paintings see daylight,
our red beasts of the ice-age studios.

Everything begins to look around.
We walk in the sun in hundreds.

Each man is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.

The endless ground under us.

The water is shining among the trees.

The lake is a window into the earth.

by Tomas Tranströmer

J. D. Salinger

"How do you know you're going to do something, until you do it?"

"People never notice anything."

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."

J.D. Salinger

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
"I don't much care where –"
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.” 

“I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” 

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Success

The eight things you can do to be like the best:

1. Stay Busy
2. Just say NO
3. Know what YOU are
4. Build Networks
5. Create Good Luck
6. Have Grit
7. Make Awesome Mistakes
8. Find Mentors

From "8 things the world's most successful people all have in common"

The 8 rules for writing a good short story

In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Kurt Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The link

"We see, but we do not see."

"We see, but we do not see: we use our eyes, but our gaze is glancing, frivolously considering its object. We see the signs, but not their meanings. We are not blinded, but we have blinders.

My deficiency is one of attention: I simply was not paying close enough attention. Though paying attention seems simple, there are numerous forms of payment. I reckon that every child has been admonished by teacher or parent to 'pay attention.' But no one tells you how to do that."

From On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz

"Nothing good gets away."

"And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away."

Letter of Note: Nothing good gets away

From a letter John Steinbeck wrote to his eldest son, Thom, who asked for his advice on love and life. November 10, 1958.

Love don't die

"No matter where we go/ Or even if we don't/ And even if they try" 

The Fray. Love Don't Die

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JmzZjZ_seVI

Rescue

"She looks into the sky and all her tears are dry she kiss her fears goodbye. She’s gonna be alright. Things were bad. It was beyond repair. She was scare, she couldn’t handle it. Things were bad, but now she’s glad. Can’t you tell that she’s walking on air?"

Rescue - Yuna

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gTmFmEBeEog

Truth and Love

Edith Windsor

Brain Pickings

The photo

"Some people get everything wrong."

"Some people get everything wrong. How can I explain? I mean, there are those who can have everything against them - three strikes, twenty strikes, for that matter - and they turn out fine. Make mistakes early on - dirty their pants in grade two, for instance - and then live out their lives in a town like ours where nothing is forgotten (any town, that is, any town is a place like that) and they manage, they prove themselves hearty and jovial, claiming and meaning that they would not for the world want to live in any place but this.

With other people, it's different. They don't move away but you wish they had. For their own sake, you could say. Whatever hole they started digging for themselves when they were young - not by any means as obvious as the dirty pants either - they keep right on at it, digging away, even exaggerating if there is a chance that it might not be noticed.

Things have changed, of course. There are counselors at the ready. Kindness and understanding. Life is harder for some, we're told. Not their fault, even if the blows are purely imaginary. Felt just as keenly by the recipient, or the nonprecipient, as the case may be.

But good use can be made of everything if you are willing."

from "Pride," Dear Life by Alice Munro

Share your passion today

"When we are truly passionate about something, it's contagious. Our passion draws other people to who we are and what we care about. Others respond by letting their guard down. Which is why sharing your passion is important in business."

Never Eat Alone. By Keith Ferrazzi 

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes."

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever."

Neil Gaiman

Courage

Col. Slade: I don't know if Charlie's silence here today is right or wrong; I'm not a judge or jury. But I can tell you this — he won't sell anybody out to buy his future! And that, my friends, is called integrity. That's called courage. Now that's the stuff leaders should be made of. [pause]Now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was; without exception, I knew. But I never took it. You know why? It was too...damn...hard. Now here's Charlie, he's come to the crossroads. He has chosen a path. It's the right path. It's a path made of principle, that leads to character. Let him continue on his journey. You hold this boy's future in your hands, committee! It's a valuable future. Believe me! Don't destroy it — protect it, embrace it. It's gonna make you proud one day, I promise you.

Scent of a Women, 1992, 

Blue Future

We've come to far,
To give up who we are
So let's raise the bar
and out cups to the stars

- Get Lucky by Daft Punk
- Daft Punk by Pentatonix