Excerpt: While Cystic Fibrosis ultimately took her life, Claire never let CF stop her from living her best life. Read our 28 Claire Wineland Quotes on life, death, and living with challenges.
“No matter how spiritually enlightened you are, or how many times you’ve thought about death and think you’re okay with it, you will grieve the life you could’ve lived when you’re dying. You’re losing the person you could’ve become, the things you could’ve done, the things you could’ve made with your life—you’re losing that. And there’s no way to get around that.” ~ Claire Wineland, YouTube
“Death is actually not a scary thing. The scary thing is living life without a passion and then realizing at the very last moment that it’s over and you haven’t done what you wanted to do—and that you’re not proud of your life. That is much more terrifying.” ~ Claire Wineland (15), TEDxMalibu
“I was dying. And I couldn’t gain any kind of control on the situation. There was no, ‘mind over matter-ing’ it for me. My lungs were failing. And I got hit with this huge wave of grief. Which is not something that I had expected. As someone who had always known that I would die young—and I had always accepted that and been okay with that—I was expecting maybe some fear, maybe some hesitation, maybe to turn into a 5-year-old then cry and want my mom… But I wasn’t expecting grief. And what I felt grief for wasn’t the fact that I was dying, it wasn’t about fear of the unknown, it was none of that. I felt grief for the life I could’ve lived. I felt grief for life itself. For all of the possibilities that it held. And I was mad at myself. I spent, literally, 30 minutes as my CO2 levels were rising and I slowly started to hallucinate, being thoroughly pissed at myself for waiting around for the world to tell me I was okay even though I was sick. For waiting around for someone to tell me that I was healthy enough, that I was better enough, I was good enough to live a life that I wanted to live. I wish that I yelled at every single person that had come into the room and said that they were sorry for me.” ~ Claire Wineland (20), EEM LA 2018
“People who are sick, nurses, and doctors—everybody in the medical care and health care communities—get so stuck in this notion that a hospital room is this cold, sterile, white place where we go to be sick and that’s all that it can be. And we get so stuck in that that we cannot see the possibility; we can’t see what we can make out of it; we don’t see what we can do with it. And I started to realize that our lives, in a way, are like this. Our lives are like empty hospital rooms. We get stuck in this idea that it’s supposed to be good or bad and we don’t let ourselves realize—we don’t let ourselves see—that we can make that hospital room beautiful. We can make our lives into a piece of art. We all have that ability, we all have that capability, as human beings, to turn these empty hospital rooms—to turn these lives—into something really beautiful.” ~ Claire Wineland, Klick MUSE New York
“Ultimately, we need to develop what the Japanese call kokoro, which means to merge our heart and mind in action. It implies that we are balanced and centered, allowing us to operate in synchronicity with our inner selves, with others, and with nature. When we commit to integral development and lead with kokoro, we will be 100 percent authentic, present, and powerful.” ~ Mark Divine, The Way of the Seal
Excerpt: These seven quotes look deeper at how we can live our best life & how we can become less afraid of death using simple analogies found in nature.
Book Overview: Nominated by Martin Luther King, Jr. for a Nobel Peace Prize, Thich Nhat Hanh is one of today’s leading sources of wisdom, peace, compassion and comfort. With hard-won wisdom and refreshing insight, Thich Nhat Hanh confronts a subject that has been contemplated by Buddhist monks and nuns for twenty-five-hundred years— and a question that has been pondered by almost anyone who has ever lived: What is death? In No Death, No Fear, the acclaimed teacher and poet examines our concepts of death, fear, and the very nature of existence. Through Zen parables, guided meditations, and personal stories, he explodes traditional myths of how we live and die. Thich Nhat Hanh shows us a way to live a life unfettered by fear.
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Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“We try to direct the mind toward recognizing reality. This is a chant that is recited daily in Buddhist monasteries: ‘Breathing in and out, I am aware of the fact that I am of the nature to die; I cannot escape dying. I am of the nature to grow old; I cannot escape old age. I am of the nature to get sick. Because I have a body, I cannot avoid sickness. Everything I cherish, treasure and cling to today, I will have to abandon one day. The only thing I can carry with me is the fruit of my own action. I cannot bring along with me anything else except the fruit of my actions in terms of thought, speech and bodily acts.'” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear
“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” ~ Joseph Campbell, via Money: Master the Game
Excerpt: What does ‘living a good life’ mean to you? Read 7 of our favorite quotes from How To Live A Good Life by Jonathan Fields and live better.
“Live in the moment for the sheer joy of living it. Then each moment has the quality of an orgasm. Yes, it is orgasmic. This is how my people have to live, with no ‘should,’ with no ‘ought,’ with no ‘must,’ with no commandment. You are not here to become martyrs; you are here to enjoy life in its fullness. And the only way to live, love, enjoy, is to forget the future. It exists not.” ~ Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition
