I wanted to call a time out, to demand that everybody just STOP until I could understand everything.
I see marriage as an operation that sews two people together, and divorce is a kind of amputation that can take a long time to heal. The longer you were married, or the rougher the amputation, the harder it is to recover.
When she was pregnant with her second child, a midwife asked if Catherine had any unspoken fears about anything that could go wrong with the baby – such as genetic defects or complications during the birth. My sister said, ‘My only fear is that he might grow up to become a Republican.
To my sister’s eyes, there is nothing which cannot be explained if one has access to a proper reference library.
She remembered a line from Montaigne, something she had read years ago, which had always stayed with her, and which now felt horribly pertinent: “These are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.
Work with all your heart, because – I promise – if you show up for your work day after day after day after day, you.
Remember that you’re nothing but a beginner – even if you’ve been working on your craft for fifty years. We are all just beginner here, and we shall all die beginners. So let it go.
So you are industrious, but not original?
I do what I do because I like doing it.
I had creativity within me that was original; I had a personality within me that was original; I had dreams and perspectives and aspirations within me that were original.
The more unsettled and unbalanced we feel, the more quickly and recklessly we are likely to fall in love.
But I remember thinking that learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job of a creative person. If you want to be an artist of any sort, it seemed to me, then handling your frustration is a fundamental aspect of the work – perhaps the single most fundamental aspect of the work.
Please tell me I’m not the only one who finds it endearing and encouraging that a legendary Roman philosopher had to reassure himself that it’s okay not to be Plato.
Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship – a play between divine grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over; half of it is absolutely in your hands, and your actions will show measurable consequence. Man.
If you don’t learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you’ll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting.
I wanted to be all Gandhi about this. I wanted to be all Nelson Mandela about this. Not realizing at the time that both Gandhi and Mandela were lawyers.
She loved it even more than ever, perhaps, because now, as an adult, she finally had the perspective to appreciate the value of her own joy.
If your goal in life is to become fearless, then I believe you’re already on the wrong path, because the only truly fearless people I’ve ever met were straight-up sociopaths and a few exceptionally reckless three-year-olds – and those aren’t good role models for anyone. The truth is, you need your fear, for obvious reasons of basic survival. Evolution did well to install a fear reflex within you, because if you didn’t have any fear, you would lead a short, crazy, stupid life.
As the saying goes: “Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them.
Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome. Your fear – programmed by evolution to be hypervigilant and insanely overprotective – will always assume that any uncertain outcome is destined to end in a bloody, horrible death. Basically, your fear is like a mall cop who thinks he’s a Navy SEAL:.