examination

end of the year
my examined life
humility and gratitude.

opening lines

"By nightfall the head lines will be about devastation.” The opening lines of Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazard. Talking about the weather or maybe not.

“I’m often asked what’s it’s like to be married to a genius.” The opening lines of  The Mind and Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein

Books I’m reading: The Transit of Venus and The Mind and Body Problem

Books I just finished reading: Lisette’s List by Susan Vreeland and The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami

truth

“In the mountains of truth  you will never climb in vain: either you will get up higher today or you will exercise your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow.”-Friedrich Nietzsche
note: quoted in The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton

Achieving your childhood Dreams

I created this blog, etcetera, then neglected to sustain it. Like Lisette’s List I will add in my New Year’s list:  2. write a daily etcetera blog daily or as often as possible. 

Today is an excerpt from the book, The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch.

“…I felt at peace and fulfilled. My life had come full circle. I had first made the list of my childhood dreams when I was eight years old. Now, thirty-eight years later, that very list had helped me say what I needed to say and carried me through.”-Randy Pausch 

Below are links to Randy Pausch’s live lectures. The 1st one is his lecture at Carnegie-Mellon complete with introductions  by his friends. The second one is a 10 minute excerpt of his lecture at a later time. And the last one is same as the 1st but without the introductions.

www.thelastlecture.com

http://youtu.be/cyuZWDX55mI

http://youtu.be/ji5_MqicxSo

the sliver moon

You are going to die

"The surprise of surprises is that although everybody who has ever lived 

in this world has died, for some reason, we think we won’t.” ⎯Hindu Aphorism

"Life is not about you"

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul says, “I, a prisoner in the Lord, implore you to lead a life worthy of your call. Bear with one another in love, in complete selflessness, gentleness, and patience. Do all you can to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together. There is one body, there is one Spirit, just as you were called into the one and same hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of all, over all, through all, and within all. And each one of us has been given his own share of this grace” (Ephesians, 4:1-7).

note: from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations

there is no other

“There is only Christ (God); he is everything, and he is in everything” (Colossians 3:11)

the ordinary things

Lord of all pots and pans

Make me a saint by getting meals

And washing up the plates.

-Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

Solitude

“That is what is strange-that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and discover what is happening or has happened. Without interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid.” -Mary Sarton, Journal of Solitude

true self

“The true value of human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.”

-Albert Einstein

language of men

“To come to man’s estate it is not necessary to get oneself killed round Madrid, or to fly mail planes, or to struggle wearily in the snows out of respect for the dignity of life. The man who can see the miraculous in a poem, who can take pure joy from music, who can break his bread with comrades, opens his window to the same refreshing wind off the sea. He too learns a language of men.

But too many men are left unawakened.”

－Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars

narrative self

“…silent walking seemed to improve my memory. …You go out into the wild and you ‘discover who you are’, you ‘establish your individual voice,’ or ‘your authentic identity’. One of the definitions of identify or selfhood being explored at present in both philosophy and psychiatry is the idea that the ability to construct a coherent narrative of one’s own life circumscribes identity-to be an individual is to own a narrative self.”-from: A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland

at that moment

"One day, a few days after the liberation, I walked through the country past flowering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the market town near the camp.Larks rose to the sky and I could hear their joyous song. There was no one to be seen for miles around; there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the lark’s jubilation and the freedom of space. I stopped, looked around, and up to the sky - and then I went down my knees. At that moment there was very little I knew of myself and the world - I had but one sentence in mind-always the same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.” "- Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning