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“I have made a great discovery. I no longer believe in anything… It is not the object that matters to me but what is between them: it is this ‘in-between’ that is the real subject of my pictures. When one reaches this state of harmony between things and one’s self, one reaches… a state of perfect freedom and peace—which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes perpetual revelation.”
George Braque, Sunbeams (Page 24)

Taking Care of Yourself IS Productive

“How can you think of yourself as a caring person if you don’t take care of yourself? If you don’t take care of yourself, you’ll stop thinking of yourself as someone who has a lot to give. Instead you’ll feel deprived. And you’ll hate your life. How can you give others joy if you can’t give yourself joy?”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 9)

Beyond the Quote (Day 392)

Isn’t it strange to think how so many of us act like self-care isn’t a productive use of time? Like sleeping for 8 hours in a night is somehow costly? Or skipping a workout to do more office work is somehow admirable? Or spending time to take a break and recover is somehow wasteful? When in reality, it’s often the opposite that is the case.

“Curiosity is a luxury for the financially secure.”
Tara Westover, Educated

“This is a magical place,” I said. “Everything shines here.” “You must stop yourself from thinking like that,” Dr. Kerry said, his voice raised. “You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you. You are gold. And returning to BYU, or even to that mountain you came from, will not change who you are. It may change how others see you, it may even change how you see yourself—even gold appears dull in some lighting—but that is the illusion. And it always was.”
Tara Westover, Educated

“Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.”
Tara Westover, Educated

“No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.”
Alan Watts, Sunbeams (Page 23)

When ‘you changed’ is a compliment.

“It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you.”
Tara Westover, Educated

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”
Tara Westover, Educated

“’You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,’ she says now. ‘You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.’”
Tara Westover, Educated

“We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things going from one quick base to another, often with a frenzy that wears us out. We collect data, things, people, ideas, ‘profound experiences,’ never penetrating any of them… But there are other times. There are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper. Then we begin our ‘going down.'”
James Carroll, Sunbeams (Page 22)

Marcus Aurelius Quote on Remembering Our Natural Born Power To Choose Between Good and Evil

“Erase the false impressions from your mind by constantly saying to yourself, I have it in my soul to keep out any evil, desire or any kind of disturbance—instead, seeing the true nature of things, I will give them only their due. Always remember this power that nature gave you.”
Marcus Aurelius, The Daily Stoic (Page 34)

Beyond the Quote (Day 391)

Your current ability to utilize the power nature gave you to keep out evil, desire, and disturbance is largely dependent on your track record. Your track record contains within it all of the successes and failures you’ve accumulated throughout your lifetime. And confidence—the confidence you have in your ability to act—is a result of nothing more than your remembered successes (or lack thereof).

“I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing.”
John Dewey, Educated

Beyond the Quote (Day 390)

Becoming educated and getting a degree are two different goals. What most of us have been taught to aspire to isn’t education—it’s accreditation. We’re taught that what’s most important isn’t what you learn along the way, but what paper you receive at the end—the one that says you’ve been “educated” by this College or that University. Which isn’t exactly unreasonable as those educational institutions are supposed to represent a certain standard of education. But, at the end of the day, after all of the “accreditations” have been handed out, what matters most isn’t the paper in and of itself—it’s the person behind the paper.

“I had a thousand dollars in my bank account. It felt strange just to think that, let alone say it. A thousand dollars. Extra. That I did not immediately need. It took weeks for me to come to terms with this fact, but as I did, I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.”
Tara Westover, Educated (Page 207)

“The seed of curiosity had been planted; it needed nothing more than time and boredom to grow. Sometimes, when I was stripping copper from a radiator or throwing the five hundredth chunk of steel into the bin, I’d find myself imagining the classrooms where Tyler was spending his days. My interest grew more acute with every deadening hour in the junkyard, until one day I had a bizarre thought: that I should enroll in the public school.”
Tara Westover, Educated (Page 60)

“A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune. I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which he is totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One’s enough.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sunbeams (Page 21)

“I have met on the street a very poor man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.”
Victor Hugo, Sunbeams (Page 21)

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
Cesare Pavese, Sunbeams (Page 21)