Since I had already searched outside myself for fulfillment in nearly every possible way, I thought, why not up the ante? I decided to quit my job and sell everything that wouldn’t fit in a suitcase. Then I set out on a journey across three continents in search of my life’s purpose. I wanted to locate the elusive intersection where my unique gifts and experiences collided with something the world needed. I hated when people asked if I was trying to “find myself” because this made me sound like a cliché, but really, that was exactly what I was doing. I was like a little kid on a scavenger hunt, scuttling over rocks and lifting logs, hoping to find something that had been in my pocket all along. Eventually, I did find what I was looking for. I found threads of it in every country I visited (there were seven in total: Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia) during my yearlong odyssey.
The place where I truly came home to myself was much less exotic than expected—my inner, authentic self. She had been waiting patiently for me to put down my suitcase, quit distracting myself with outward pursuits, and return to join her in her natural habitat.
The Irresistible Introvert: Harness the Power of Quiet Charisma in a Loud World
Michaela Chung
Category: TRANSCIENCE
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A hermit said, ‘If you lose gold or silver, you can find something as good as you lost. But the man who loses time can never make up what he has lost.’
The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
Benedicta Ward -
“The question of where to live and what to do is really insignificant compared to the question of how to keep the eyes of my heart focused on the Lord. I can be teaching at Yale, working in the bakery at the Genesee Abbey, walking with poor children in Peru, or writing a book, and still feel totally useless.”
—Henri Nouwen -
If the path toward heavenly bliss seems difficult, compare it with the path toward earthly happiness, and you will see that the path toward earthly happiness is not really easier at all. Just observe how much people toil to amass earthly things, how many disappointments, fights, sleepless nights and deprivations they bear. Or remind yourself of how much effort and expenses it takes to achieve some meaningless and fleeting pleasure! And for what? Instead of the expected happiness, you are left with disappointment and weariness. When you carefully examine the heart of the matter, it becomes evident that people stay away from the Heavenly Kingdom not because the path to it is more difficult than the other paths of this world, but because it appears that way to them.
—St. Innocent of Alaska, The Way Into the Kingdom of Heaven -
“Much time had I spent in vanity, and had wasted nearly all my youth in vain labour.”
—St. Basil the Great -
By design, we must fully live the life that only we can live. Every person that lives less than his or her potential is limiting all human potential because that person is not offering the world the fullness of his or her true self.
More or Less: Choosing a Lifestyle of Excessive Generosity
Jeff Shinabarger -
“Not only do my choices and their consequences effect those around me immediately, but my choices also effect those far away and those not yet born.”
—Fr. Michael Gillis
“Your lives in your homes are a responsibility, and have a deep effect in the generations coming after you.”
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III
“The life of each one of us does not end at death on this earth and birth into heaven. We place a seal on everyone we meet. This responsibility continues after death, and the living are related to the dead for whom they pray. In the dead we no longer belong completely to the world; in us the dead still belong to history. Prayer for the dead is vital; it expresses the totality of our common life.”
—Metropolitan Anthony Bloom
Every human being is an incalculable force, bearing within him something of the future. To the end of time, our daily words and actions will bear fruit, either good or bad; nothing that we have once given of ourselves will perish, but our words and works, handed on from one to another, will continue to do good or harm to remote generations. This is why life is a sacred thing, and we ought not to pass through it thoughtlessly, but to appreciate its value and use it so that, when we are gone, the sum total of good in the world may be greater.
—Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur -
Just as people do not enter a war in order to enjoy war, but in order to be saved from war, so we do not enter this world in order to enjoy this world, but in order to be saved from it. People go to war for the sake of something greater than war. So we also enter this temporal life for the sake of something greater: for eternal life. And as soldiers think with joy about returning home, so also Christians constantly remember the end of their lives and their return to their heavenly fatherland.
—St. Nicholas of Serbia, Thoughts on Good and Evil -
This is a bit of a somber exercise, but it’s very powerful:
When you are with your spouse, significant other, best friend or a close relative, picture the moment, in all its mundane detail, as if you’re looking back on it from a point in life where that person is no longer around. No need to imagine any upsetting explanations for their absence; the part of your life that includes that special person is just over, and you are happy to have been with them while your lives overlapped.
Observe them as if you’ve been shipped back from the future, to see them once again on an ordinary day, with absolutely no reason to take it for granted.
You will probably feel a heavy sensation of gratitude, and you’ll find it difficult not to pay attention to the things that were said today.
Things We Said Today
David Cain
SO GOOD QUOTES 