If you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it.
Of course, a sign doesn’t mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.
We none of us find as much kindness in this world as we should.
Watch for the thing that will show itself to you. Because that thing, when you find it, will be your future.
Every step I have taken has been to bring myself closer to you.
We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring.
Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.
The very idea!” he said, with another big laugh. “You, growing up in a dump like Yoroido. That’s like making tea in a bucket!
If he couldn’t forgive you for what you’d done, it was clear to me he was never truly your destiny.
I understood that he left me at the end of his long life just as naturally as the leaves fall from the trees.
When I said these words, all the heat in my body seemed to rise to my face. I felt I might float up into the air, just like a piece of ash from a fire.
Since the day I’d left Yoroido, I’d done nothing but worry that every turn of life’s wheel would bring yet another obstacle into my path; and of course, it was the worrying and the struggle that had always made life so vividly real to me.
Never give up; for even rivers someday wash dams away.
I don’t think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.
My mother once told me I was like water. Water can carve its way even through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path.
When we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency.
Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.
I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.
I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.
Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.