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Alicia Keys Quote on Perfection and Being Okay With Our Imperfect Reality

    “I tend to want every person to embody the best of humanity—for all of us to be givers and builders and dreamers. That’s not reality. At different seasons in life, we each fall into various categories. Even still, every one of us also has a strong behavioral tendency, and that is okay. I’m coming to terms with the fact that so-called perfection—this idea that everything should be beautiful and in order at all times—is just not going to happen.”

    Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 254)

    Beyond the Quote (Day 386)

    And as she says in her song, Authors of Forever, “Wherever you are, it’s alright / Whoever you are, it’s alright.” It’s okay to be who you are, where you are on your journey. None of us are perfect and we all lead imperfect lives. Expect perfection from someone—anyone—and you’ll always end up disappointed. Expect imperfection and you’ll at least be able to meet people where they are. Disappointment leads to emotional distancing and separation. Understanding leads to emotional advancing and connection.

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      “True love has no object. Many speak of their unconditional love for another. Unconditional love is the experience of being; there is no ‘I’ and ‘other,’ and anyone or anything it touches is experienced in love. You cannot unconditionally love someone. You can only be unconditional love. It is not a dualistic emotion. It is a sense of oneness with all that is. The experience of love arises when we surrender our separateness into the universal. It is a feeling of unity. You don’t love another, you are another. There is no fear because there is no separation.”

      Stephen Levine, Who Dies?, via Sunbeams (Page 15)

      Humans [Book]

        Humans by Brandon Stanton
        By: Brandon Stanton

        Book Overview: Brandon Stanton created Humans of New York in 2010. What began as a photographic census of life in New York City, soon evolved into a storytelling phenomenon. A global audience of millions began following HONY daily. Over the next several years, Stanton broadened his lens to include people from across the world. Traveling to more than forty countries, he conducted interviews across continents, borders, and language barriers. Humans is the definitive catalogue of these travels. The faces and locations will vary from page to page, but the stories will feel deeply familiar. Told with candor and intimacy, Humans will resonate with readers across the globe―providing a portrait of our shared experience.

        Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

        6 Quotes ➜
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          “Separateness is a myth. The content of both your physical and mental bodies has been gathered from the outside. They belong to you but they are not you. If you want to go the way your body is going currently, you should know that it is going straight to the grave. Similarly, whatever you know as the mind is a complex mess of all the stuff that it has been accumulating. The objectives of the mind are entirely self-created. They may seem to be fine right now, but they usually take you completely away from the process of life. So, if you go the way your mind goes, you should know you are heading toward an alternative psychological creation; it may be fascinating, stimulating, or even comforting for a length of time, but it bears no relation at all to existential reality.”

          Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 210)

            “Responsibility is not burdensome. Boundaries are burdensome. If you draw yourself a boundary, whether of ideology, caste, creed, race, or religion, you cannot move beyond it and you end up stuck for no reason at all. These boundaries only end up breeding fear, hatred, and anger. The bigger your boundary, the more burdensome it becomes. But if your responsibility is limitless, where’s the boundary? No boundary, no burden. This is the turnaround in human consciousness that needs to take place. Once this happens, it is not that the cosmos begins to happen your way. Instead, what you are becomes cosmic. This is not transcendence; this is homecoming.”

            Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 69)

              “There’s a thing that worries me sometimes when you talk about creativity because it can have this kind of feel that it’s just nice, or warm, or pleasant—it’s not. It’s vital. It’s the way we heal each other. In singing our song, in telling our story, in inviting you to say, ‘Hey, listen to me and I’ll listen to you,’ we’re starting a dialog. And when you do that this healing happens. And we come out of our corners. And we start to witness each other’s common humanity. We start to assert it. And when we do that? Really good things happen.”

              Ethan Hawke, TED

                “To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you, that’s what I think a meaningful life is. One lives not just for oneself but for one’s community.”

                Ruth Bader Ginsburg, CNN

                  “When you step back from the enormity of your own immediate experience—whatever it is—you are able to see the experience of others and either connect with them or lessen the intensity of your own pain. We are all strands in a long rope that stretches back countless generations and ties together every person in every country on every continent. We are all thinking and feeling the same things, we are all made of and motivated by the same things. We are all stardust.”

                  Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 160)

                  Quote about Ubuntu and How We Are All Connected

                    Ubuntu

                    Beyond the Quote (103/365)

                    Once, an anthropologist proposed a game to kids in an African tribe.  He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told them that whoever got there first would win the entire basket.  When he gave them the signal to run, they all took each other’s hands and ran together.  Once they arrived at the tree, they sat in a circle and enjoyed the fruits together.  When he asked them why they chose to run as a group when they could have raced against each other for the whole basket, one child spoke up and said, “UBUNTU—how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”

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                    Rob Dyer Quote on Staying Focused On The Right Things—Things That Bring Us Together

                      “At the end of the day, you can either focus on what’s tearing you apart, or what’s holding you together.”

                      Rob Dyer

                      Beyond the Quote (74/365)

                      There is a lot happening right now that can make us feel like we’re being torn apart.  With the threat and spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), there is more and more happening each day that is moving us further and further apart and into smaller and smaller groups (even into isolation).  Everything from the biggest organizational gatherings in the world to the most remote meetings in our own backyard are being postponed and cancelled to prevent the spread of the virus.  During this time when we are being forced apart physically, we need to find ways to continue to come together mentally and emotionally.

                      Read More »Rob Dyer Quote on Staying Focused On The Right Things—Things That Bring Us Together

                        “Looking deeply into the flower, we see that the flower is made of non-flower elements.  We describe the flower as being full of everything.  There is nothing that is not present in the flower.  We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.  A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements.  The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself.  The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

                          “When you look at the surface of the ocean, you can see waves coming up and going down.  You can describe these waves in terms of high or low, big or small, more vigorous or less vigorous, more beautiful or less beautiful.  You can describe a wave in terms of beginning and end, birth and death.  That can be compared to the historical dimension.  In the historical dimension, we are concerned with birth and death, more powerful, less powerful, more beautiful, less beautiful, beginning and end and so on.  Looking deeply, we can also see that the waves are at the same time water.  A wave may like to seek its own true nature.  The wave might suffer from fear, from complexes.  A wave may say, ‘I am not as big as the other waves,’ ‘I am oppressed,’ ‘I am not as beautiful as the other waves,’ ‘I have been born and I have to die.’  The wave may suffer from these things, these ideas.  But if the wave bends down and touches her true nature she will realize that she is water.  Then her fear and complexes will disappear.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear