Category: BEST OF

  • You should dwell on something exactly to the point that dwelling on it further doesn’t do you any good.

    —Bret Weinstein

  • “He was looking for joy and found the Cross. What remedy is there for his sadness? He must rediscover the spirit of poverty. A rich person is someone who expects everything. A poor person is someone for whom everything is a gift. Nothing is owed us, not even our existence. ‘What do you have that you have not received?’ Friendship, happiness, joy are not owed us.”

    —Jean-Yves Leloup, Being Still

  • Remembered suffering never feels as bad as present suffering.

    —Sally Rooney

  • “Do the next thing.” I don’t know any simpler formula for peace, for relief from stress and anxiety than that very practical, very down-to-earth word of wisdom. Do the next thing. That has gotten me through more agonies than anything else I could recommend.

    ―Elisabeth Elliot, Suffering Is Never for Nothing

  • “Suffering passes. . . to suffer well lasts an eternity”

    —St. Thérèse of Lisieux

  • Woe to our times: we now depart from the narrow and sorrowful path leading to eternal life and we seek a happy and peaceful path. But the merciful Lord leads many people from this path, against their will, and places them on the sorrowful one. Through unwanted sorrows and illnesses we draw closer to the Lord, for they humble us by constraint, and humility, when we acquire it, can save us even without works, according to St. Isaac the Syrian.

    —St. Macarius of Optina

  • “At times, our lives will be turned upside down with nothing to support us but our decision to keep in the goodness and faithfulness of God. Even many of the great saints were left without answers to their cries. St. Antony the Great questioned God about all the injustices of the world and Gods reply to him was, ‘Antony, keep your attention on yourself; these things are according to the judgment of God, and it is not to your advantage to know anything about them.””

    All That I Have Is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI on the Spiritual Life
    Fr. Kyrillos Ibrahim

  • “Reality is irrelevant; Perception is everything.”

    —Terry Goodkind

  • Worries are less obtrusive when we choose activities that bring us into a state of flow. When we experience flow, we are completely immersed in what we are doing. We are so absorbed in the present moment that time falls away and we forget our worries. A friend of mine is obsessed with ice climbing.  Climbing up a mountain in the bitter cold does not sound like much fun to me, but when she explained why she loves it, I immediately understood. “It forces me to focus only on climbing, because if I don’t I could fall. It’s the only time I forget everything else–all my worries, my work, everything–and just focus on what is right in front of me.” What my friend was describing was the sensation of being in flow.

    A few years ago I took up sewing. I spent hours creating dresses and dance costumes. I was so absorbed in my creations that hours flew by without my noticing. Nowadays, I experience flow most when I’m writing. Instead of sewing fabric, I stitch together ideas. When I’m immersed in a writing project, I can’t think about anything else.  Writing gives me plenty of footholds to climb out of all the dark places my thoughts want to go. Other introverts might feel this way when they are playing the piano, gardening, or cooking. Anything that fully immerses us in the present moment will also give us respite from our worries.

    —Michaela Chung, The Irresistible Introvert

  • “What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.”

    —Ellen Glasgow