Quotes

“We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.”

— Dr. Gabor Maté

BEING HUMAN
Being human means we will experience loneliness. We all have a hole inside, an emptiness, that we long to fill in whatever way we can. We reach for solutions. We move away from ourselves when what we really need to be doing is moving closer.
We do whatever we can to avoid being in the middle of this human experience. To avoid tuning in and feeling.
When I drive around my small city in Florida, I see people texting in their cars. They’re stopped at a traffic light, and instead of staring off into space, they’re checking out whatever new developments have arisen in the last minute since they stopped and texted at the precious traffic light.
When is the last time you just gazed into the distance?
Just sat and thought?
Or ate a meal by yourself without your trusty phone or e-reader by your side?
We need to tune in.
Not tune out.
To be human is to be lonely, and we don’t allow for that loneliness. We don’t allow ourselves to get quiet enough to hear our own deepest wisdom. Beyond the ache of loneliness, when we allow ourselves to be pierced by all of it, is the greatest joy we have ever known.
If we don’t let ourselves feel, we avoid the depths of our pain, but we also miss out on the depths of our joy and connectedness.
Allow yourself the free fall! Feel what it is to be human, all of it. We’re all so terrified that if we fall, we’ll never stop. So we don’t go there. And in stopping ourselves, we’re impeding our growth.
Embrace the ache.
Breathe in the longing.
Throughout the course of your day, commit to building moments of nothingness, moments of silence, of idleness, into your experience. Give your deepest intuition a space in which to speak to you. Stop talking. Start listening.
Just for today, promise yourself that you’ll take a minute to do nothing, just a single minute, during every waking hour.
Try it right now. Wherever you are, stop whatever you are doing. 
And for a solid minute, look out the window. It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking at a brick wall, a fire escape, a meadow, or a skyline.
What matters is the nothingness. The inactivity. The space you’re making for your truest and deepest voice to emerge.~
~Panache Desai