“You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself—it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are.”
– Richard Feynman, Letter to Koichi Mano, quoted in The Writer Who Stayed by William Zinsser
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“I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living on Rupert Mountain opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day’s work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly…. If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
– Frederick Buechner, Now and Then
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It’s been a couple of years since I gave up social media.
I have discovered more space to be myself
In turn, there is less opportunity for negative comparison with others.
I am more focused on the books I read.
I simply read more books.
And in books, I feel the authors want the best for me.
A book is like a conversation with a friend.
A social media post, a boast from someone in a noisy bar.
Books do not demand an immediate response.
Unless a quote speaks directly to something deep inside. Or converses with another author.
Like today.
Twenty four hours.
Two different books.
One message.
Gratitude for who I am.
Where I am.
Not who I think I should be.
Conversations With Quotations 