“Every day matters. The awareness of our mortality can help us pursue a goal. We all have a limited amount of time on earth. Those who live in active awareness of this reality are more likely to identify goals and make progress toward them. Or to put it another way: Everyone dies, but not everyone truly lives.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 268)
“If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”
Albert Camus, via Sunbeams (Page 70)
“In India it is common wisdom that the world is like a waiting room in a railway station; it is not your house. You are not going to remain in the waiting room forever. Nothing in the waiting room belongs to you—the furniture, the paintings on the wall… You use them—you see the painting, you sit on the chair, you rest on the bed—but nothing belongs to you. You are just here for a few minutes, or for a few hours at the most, then you will be gone.”
Osho, Courage (Page 34)
“You are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don’t notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply—though all the while that very day… may be your last.” ~ Seneca, via Essential Zen Habits (Page 22)
“It takes seventy or eighty or ninety years to learn the value of another sunrise or a visit from a surly grandchild—to appreciate how amazing, really amazing, life is. They only seem paltry because we haven’t lived long enough to see their value, or survived enough losses to know how surmountable most losses are. Simple gifts can be as rewarding as more elaborate ones, and there’s no rule that a life of daily mah-jongg in a fluorescent-lit community room is less fulfilling than one of high-stakes baccarat in Monte Carlo.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 215)
“This may be the one-sentence essence of what I learned in my year among the oldest old: to shut down the noise and fears and desires that buffet our days and think about how amazing, really amazing, life is. Could I do this? Before the year began, my answer would have been no, that the noise and fears and desires were life itself. But as the year went along I found myself shifting my focus to the quiet beneath the noise—how unlikely the moment was, how each sliver contained a gift that might never return. Maybe this was what it meant to think like an old person. I couldn’t live wholly in the moment, because I had a future to think about, but if I had learned anything, it was to live as if this future were finite, and the present all the more wondrous as a result.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 210)
“Some people do not even want to look at a person when the person is alive, but when the person dies they write eloquent obituaries and make offerings of flowers. At that point the person has died and cannot really enjoy the fragrance of the flowers anymore. If we really understood and remembered that life was impermanent, we would do everything we could to make the other person happy right here and right now. If we spend twenty-four hours being angry at our beloved, it is because we are ignorant of impermanence.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear
