“Famously tall [Redwood trees], you’d think that they need deep roots to survive, but in fact their roots are shallow. What gives the trees resilience is that these roots spread widely. Redwoods best thrive in groves, interweaving their roots so the strong and weak together withstand the forces of nature.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 223)
“I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds. I do not make any of my own clothing. I speak a language I did not invent or refine. I did not discover the mathematics I use. I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate. I am moved by music I did not create myself. When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive. I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with. I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.”
Steve Jobs
“How to be happy? Here was a start. Accept whatever kindnesses people offer you, and repay with what you can. Let a friend buy you lunch, then do her a solid in return. You’ll benefit from the favors you receive, but even more from the ones you perform. Don’t begrudge the people who need you; thank them for letting you help them. Give up the obsession with self-reliance; it’s a myth, anyway. None of these comes naturally to me, and even as I write them now, they seem too pat. But in Helen and Howie I saw them in action, again and again, and here is what I saw: they worked. They weren’t genius; they were wisdom.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 62)
“When a poet writes a poem, meaning arises – because the poet is not alone; he has created something. When a dancer dances, meaning arises. When a mother gives birth to a child, meaning arises. Left alone, cut off from everything else, isolated like an island, you are meaningless. Joined together you are meaningful. The bigger the whole, the bigger is the meaning.”
Osho, The Book of Understanding (page 155)
“Man’s chief purpose… is the creation and preservation of values, that is what gives meaning to our civilization, and the participation in this is what gives significance, ultimately, to the individual human life… The individual contribution, the work of any single generation, is infinitesimal; the power and glory belong to human society at large, and are the long result of selection, conservation, sacrifice, creation, and renewal — the outcome of endless brave efforts to conserve values and ideas, and to hand them on to posterity, along with physical life itself. Each person is a temporary focus of forces, vitalities, and values that carry back into an immemorial past and that reach forward into an unthinkable future.” ~ Lewis Mumford, Faith for Living
“It’s not that we ignore our weaknesses; rather, we make our weaknesses irrelevant by working effectively with others so that we compensate for our weaknesses through their strengths and they compensate for their weaknesses through our strengths.” ~ Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust
“Consider how many people had to be involved for a particular thought to be formed. Every thought you have involves everyone you have ever known: your teachers, your siblings, your parents, your parents’ parents, your parents’ teachers, and on and on. Without this participation from the whole, the thought wouldn’t have come out the way it did. It wouldn’t have the ground from which to form. You wouldn’t even have the language to think with. Everything happens more out of a ‘we’ than a ‘me.’ Everything in the universe is involved with everything that happens. If everything in the universe participates in scratching your nose or having a thought or having a feeling, can you really call these experiences ‘yours?’” ~ Nirmala
“The inspiration of a noble cause involving human interests wide and far, enables men to do things they did not dream themselves capable of before, and which they were not capable of alone. The consciousness of belonging, vitally, to something beyond individuality; of being part of a personality that reaches we know not where, in space and time, greatens the heart to the limit of the souls ideal, and builds out the supreme character.” ~ Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
“When a king begins to act like a king, it is not long before someone else is king! Serving is a way we can place value on one another. A wise man is a server.” ~ Andy Andrews, The Traveler’s Gift