My therapist told me this a few times, and it’s so simple yet so transformative for me.
I spent so much time feeling guilty for having “negative” emotions towards people I loved, feeling destroyed by the contradictions of what people did to me Vs how they treated other people, or just confused by narratives that clashed from different people, in my life and in the world.
And there is something so freeing about making space for more than one truth, more than one reality. Accepting an emotion or a concept without it necessarily negating another one.
“If you’ve come this far than maybe you’re willing to go a little bit further” (and this is something that I used to tell myself every day while I was on probation).
“We are responsible for what we do, regardless of how we feel.”
This has been both a good thing to keep in mind when making decisions myself as well as when I’m trying to decide how I feel about things other people have done.
A few days before my Grandad died I saw him in hospital (about 6 years ago this week as it was days before my wedding). He said “You learn in life by living it” he probably heard it somewhere but I will never forget it.
I’m not religious, but the passage called “Attitude” by Chuck Swindoll, which ends with the quote, “I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes.”
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
“Transvestites” are the canaries of the world. They are the first ones removed when an environment turns poisonous. What makes it more worrisome is you represent everything. You represent housing and job security and access to healthcare. You represent workers’ rights and voting right and full stomachs and freedom. And perhaps most importantly of all, you represent the right to body and personhood. You represent a country not owning you, not using you however benefits a select few at the top. If transvestites are under attack, then the whole of the country is on the brink of destruction.
The reasonable person adapts to the world. The unreasonable person persists to adapt the world to themselves. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable person. – George Bernard Shaw
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” – Rachel Carson
“Who’s gonna remember you in 100 years? Right, nobody! So do the damn thing, dress the way you want and don’t give a single shit aboutwhat the others might think!”
“The hell where youth and laughter go.” From Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon always stuck with me since so first read the poem in 8th grade. As I age (I’m 27 now), the line grows in poignancy.
The poem itself is bleak from start to finish, but the final line feels like a punch in the chest. Many of the men who fought in WW1 were basically children. 17 or 18. Many of them had never kissed a girl, never had a beer at the pub with their father, never been with a woman, weren’t married or had children. They were sent en masse to the greatest slaughter Western Europe had ever created fresh out of childhood with notions of adventure and proving themselves in combat, only to be ruthlessly and unceremoniously butchered by machine guns and artillery by young men just as terrified as themselves.
War is hell, The First World War was a very special sort of impassionate, pointless hell that took place in a moonscape of mud, barbed wire, and decomposing corpses.
What is the quote?
“I‘ve already survived Hell, and it’s called Verdun.”
“People die at their dinner tables, die in their beds. They die squatting over their chamberpots. Everybody dies, sooner or later. Don’t worry about your death. Worry about your life. Take charge of your life, for as long as it lasts.”
— Petyr Baelish
“live in the way your presence is not noted, but your absence does lack”Looks controversial and is it what intrigues me, but it’s totally possible be this person
I forget the exact words, but in one episode of Scrubs J.D. realizes that our parents are just people. They mess things up, and have to make decisions based off of their needs (money, health, etc). We hold our parents on this godlike pedestal thinking that they should be endlessly selfless and available, when really they’re just doing their best just like the rest of us. It really helped me get through my parents’ divorce and subsequent years
“never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body.
You stick to that, everything else is cream cheese”
-Coach Bobby Finstock
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life”
-Capt Jean Luc Picard
“change always comes long after we think it should”
-Also Capt Jean Luc Picard
Was on acid Met a homeless guy who train hopped across the country who’s destination was my next door neighbors house somehow and at one point he said “if you’ve got one foot in the past and one in the future you’re pissing on the present”
“Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower, we will grieve not; rather find strength in what remains behind.” ~ Splendor in the Grass
Live every day like it’s on purpose. It’s from hitch. Big cheeseball movie but it’s ok. But that line hit me hard. I was just coasting through life passively watching it roll by. I was depressed af and hated every single day. It was the start of my turning point
That really hit me hard the first time I heard it going through a loss of a loved one, but dammit if it isn’t the truth. Truly does help you process and move forward with life without them
“A little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing” – a guy at a gas station when I was lamenting about how little my job was paying me. I use it when not studying the whole hour or I only got to clean a portion of what I originally intended.
“Check your work before you hand it to the examiner”
My dad always says this. It applies to every facet of life not just school. ‘Checking your work’ is simply just double-checking you did something; locked the door when you left, sent that important email, etc. And ‘the examiner’ is the consequences; house getting robbed or not, getting in trouble with the boss or not. It has saved my ass multiple times over the years.
“Find happiness in the small things in life”-my dad.
Tool me a while to understand what he meant.
I realize now all the small things in life there are to be happy about.
I’m happily married.
I have a house to live in.
I eat regularly
My child is healthy and doing well in life.
I have a vehicle to drive.
I’m not in crippling debt.
Comments
“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”
“Suffer the pain of discipline, or suffer the pain of regret.”
“Never let a win get to your head and never let a loss get to your heart.”
“No matter what, be contented”
“Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is just keep going.”
“The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
-Frank Herbert, Dune
“I’ll save tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow’s me.”
Don’t be a dick
“Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.” Kahlil Gibran.
“Two things can be true at once”
My therapist told me this a few times, and it’s so simple yet so transformative for me.
I spent so much time feeling guilty for having “negative” emotions towards people I loved, feeling destroyed by the contradictions of what people did to me Vs how they treated other people, or just confused by narratives that clashed from different people, in my life and in the world.
And there is something so freeing about making space for more than one truth, more than one reality. Accepting an emotion or a concept without it necessarily negating another one.
If you want the rainbow, you have to deal with the rain
“If you’ve come this far than maybe you’re willing to go a little bit further” (and this is something that I used to tell myself every day while I was on probation).
“The bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go” – Galileo
Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you love.
“There you go, giving a fuck when it ain’t your turn to give a fuck” -Bunk
’those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind’
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.’”
“We are responsible for what we do, regardless of how we feel.”
This has been both a good thing to keep in mind when making decisions myself as well as when I’m trying to decide how I feel about things other people have done.
“actually, life is beautiful and I do have the time”
“It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.”
A few days before my Grandad died I saw him in hospital (about 6 years ago this week as it was days before my wedding). He said “You learn in life by living it” he probably heard it somewhere but I will never forget it.
I’m not religious, but the passage called “Attitude” by Chuck Swindoll, which ends with the quote, “I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes.”
never treat someone as a priority if they treat you as an option.
I have two:
“You have to know where you’ve been, to know where you are going”
$DO | | ! $DO ; try
try: command not found
“It get’s easier. Everyday it get’s a little easier, but you gotta do it everyday- that’s the hard part. But it does get easier”
“there’s two of the most important days of a persons life. the day they were born, and the day they find out why.”
“Don’t get nervous until the flight attendants get nervous”
If you don’t learn from lessons of people, you become lessons to other people.
When people show you who they are believe them.
“A wise man learns from their mistakes. An even wiser man learns from others mistakes”
The bonds of habit are to light to be felt – until they are too heavy to be broken
“You dont exist, until you do”
no one really pays attention to you until you exist. Kinda like everyone recognizes/loves spiderman but people walks past “peter parkers” everyday
It either works, or it fu?king doesnt
“You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it”
“You’re not broken, you just need new glasses”
“If you’re good at something, never do it for free”
Do not be sorry, be better.
“What you feed, grows.”
You don’t have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun the other campers.
“9 women can’t make a baby in 1 month”
I use this all the time in Product Management when people say we can just hire some contractors.
“If it’s not an enthusiastic yes then it’s a no”
“Find someone who loves you enough to make you forget how much you hate yourself.”
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
For creatives, this one is by Ira Glass:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
Graveyards are full of people who had the right-of-way.
Deez nuts
“Now I know that if you wait till you think you are ready, you’ll wait all your life”— John Flanagan (Ranger Apprentice)
“Take the path you want, not the path society wants”
My Dad told me, “Fear nothing, respect everything.”
This too shall pass. Whether it’s good or bad, it always reminds me everything is temporary
This quote from The Lilac People:
“Transvestites” are the canaries of the world. They are the first ones removed when an environment turns poisonous. What makes it more worrisome is you represent everything. You represent housing and job security and access to healthcare. You represent workers’ rights and voting right and full stomachs and freedom. And perhaps most importantly of all, you represent the right to body and personhood. You represent a country not owning you, not using you however benefits a select few at the top. If transvestites are under attack, then the whole of the country is on the brink of destruction.
Note, the quote uses historical terms.
“That’s the way the ball bounces”
My grandma said it a lot, and was the last thing she said to me when talking to her about life
The reasonable person adapts to the world. The unreasonable person persists to adapt the world to themselves. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable person. – George Bernard Shaw
“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” – Rachel Carson
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today.”
Ironically, I read it here on Reddit about a decade ago. But it’s stuck with me and served me well.
“Who’s gonna remember you in 100 years? Right, nobody! So do the damn thing, dress the way you want and don’t give a single shit aboutwhat the others might think!”
The world is full of Kings and Queens who’ll blind your eyes then steal your dreams.
Basically those above you will stab you in the back at every opportunity.
I should have taken more notice.
I guess it doesn’t have to be a positive impact…
My mother told me when I was a kid, “Friend is spelled F R I E N D because all friendships END.”
“everything is more beautiful because we are doomed: you will never be lovelier than you are now. we will never be here again.”
The Iliad, Homer
“Jesus didn’t come to this world to make evil men good, Jesus came to this world to make dead men live”
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” ~ Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Elenor Roosevelt
The Last Time Poem
“One day you will carry them on your hip then set them down,
And never pick them up that way again.”
Absolutely destroys me every time I read it.
If you’re really doing the best you can, then that is the best you can do.
Lard is as good as butter if you’ve never had butter
“People who describe themselves as brutally honest enjoy the brutality more than the honesty”.
When I heard this it immediately changed the way I interacted with people; I tried to be a little more kind.
“The hell where youth and laughter go.” From Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon always stuck with me since so first read the poem in 8th grade. As I age (I’m 27 now), the line grows in poignancy.
The poem itself is bleak from start to finish, but the final line feels like a punch in the chest. Many of the men who fought in WW1 were basically children. 17 or 18. Many of them had never kissed a girl, never had a beer at the pub with their father, never been with a woman, weren’t married or had children. They were sent en masse to the greatest slaughter Western Europe had ever created fresh out of childhood with notions of adventure and proving themselves in combat, only to be ruthlessly and unceremoniously butchered by machine guns and artillery by young men just as terrified as themselves.
War is hell, The First World War was a very special sort of impassionate, pointless hell that took place in a moonscape of mud, barbed wire, and decomposing corpses.
What is the quote?
“I‘ve already survived Hell, and it’s called Verdun.”
“Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant, then it tries to silence good”.
No one on their death bed has ever said “I wish I spent more time at work”
Always treat people how you want to be treated yourself. My mum.
Don’t chase. Relationships (romantic or otherwise) should be about people coming together.
“When the axe came into the forest, the trees whispered, ‘The handle is one of us’. “
Referring to pets: “they’re apart of your life, but you’re their whole life”.
Progress isn’t linear.
I have a bunch, actually.
“If you succeed at more than 80% of the things you do, you can afford to attempt harder things.”
“If you are the smartest person in the room, find a smarter room.”
And two from my father, when I was growing up:
“Never eat anything bigger than your head.”
“If you got your head stuck in there, you can get it out again.”
” Never let it be said that your Mother bred a gibber “
37 years on, and it still resonates.
“Mercy is rarely a complete mistake.”
Don’t criticize what you don’t understand.
“20 years from now, the only people who will remember that you worked late are your kids”
“Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.”
You cannot push the river.
“People are going to talk about you for the rest of your life, why let it start bothering you now.” – Mom
“People die at their dinner tables, die in their beds. They die squatting over their chamberpots. Everybody dies, sooner or later. Don’t worry about your death. Worry about your life. Take charge of your life, for as long as it lasts.”
— Petyr Baelish
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt
“live in the way your presence is not noted, but your absence does lack”Looks controversial and is it what intrigues me, but it’s totally possible be this person
Can’t never could
Do it scared, but do it.
“Do not resent growing old, many are denied the privilege” -Irish Proverb
My father died when I was 12, he was just about to turn 50.
I first heard this quote when I was around 15 or so, and its always stuck with me
Nothing changes if nothing changes
Be curious, not judgemental….except when on Reddit
“Control your money, do not let it control you”
What we do in life echoes for all eternity.
You can’t change people. You have to accept then as they are.
I forget the exact words, but in one episode of Scrubs J.D. realizes that our parents are just people. They mess things up, and have to make decisions based off of their needs (money, health, etc). We hold our parents on this godlike pedestal thinking that they should be endlessly selfless and available, when really they’re just doing their best just like the rest of us. It really helped me get through my parents’ divorce and subsequent years
The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.
Stewart Lee…
“Truth is immutable”.
“never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body.
You stick to that, everything else is cream cheese”
-Coach Bobby Finstock
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life”
-Capt Jean Luc Picard
“change always comes long after we think it should”
-Also Capt Jean Luc Picard
I got two from the same cartoon:
“some people get built different. we don’t need to figure it out. We just gotta respect it” Princess Bubblegum
And
“Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something” Jake the Dog
“Mental health isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility.”
“Love is an action word. I can show you more than I can tell you.”
“Bitch don’t kill my vibe.”
“No amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can solve the future.”
“What others think of me is none of my business” – RuPaul Charles
Was on acid Met a homeless guy who train hopped across the country who’s destination was my next door neighbors house somehow and at one point he said “if you’ve got one foot in the past and one in the future you’re pissing on the present”
Always have something to look forward to
“There’s a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.”
Everyone wants what’s best for themselves—even your parents.
I love to be proven wrong, it gives me the chance to learn something new.
Those that could, did.
Those that couldn’t, didn’t.
Those that did, are.
Those that didn’t, aren’t.
(Definition of evolution by my professor. )
Whether the stone hits the glass or the glass hits the stone, it ain’t going to break the stone.
“Im lost, I’ve gone to look for myself, if I return before I get back, please tell me to wait.”
“Well, if that’s love; it comes at much too high a cost.”
“In order to love oneself, one must act in ways in which they admire”
Candles don’t dim when they light others up.
Heard this one recently and it resonated with me. “Forget the mistake but remember the lesson”
Consistency is more important than accuracy
“Take it sleazy” -Blake Henderson
Don’t accept criticism from someone you would not go to for advice.
“Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower, we will grieve not; rather find strength in what remains behind.” ~ Splendor in the Grass
One must want nothing to be different-not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not only bear what is necessary, but to love it.”
You can’t erase a dream you can only wake me up
In the face of such hopelessness of our inevitable death it makes no sense to not at least try to achieve your wildest dreams in life.
Kevin Smith
This inspired me to finally go to medical school. I enter the match for residency this fall.
Behind rose-tinted glasses, red flags just look like flags.
Good people will do good things and evil people will do evil things, but for good people to do evil things, that takes religion
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
Live every day like it’s on purpose. It’s from hitch. Big cheeseball movie but it’s ok. But that line hit me hard. I was just coasting through life passively watching it roll by. I was depressed af and hated every single day. It was the start of my turning point
“The loss of ones mother is such a primal loss”.
See a problem, try and solve it. Inspiration, perspiration.
“Grief is just love with no place to go”
That really hit me hard the first time I heard it going through a loss of a loved one, but dammit if it isn’t the truth. Truly does help you process and move forward with life without them
You get what you give.
Its easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, Harvey Specter
Leadership is a demonstration, not an announcement.
“A little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing” – a guy at a gas station when I was lamenting about how little my job was paying me. I use it when not studying the whole hour or I only got to clean a portion of what I originally intended.
Most Folks Are About As Happy As They Make Up Their Minds To Be – Abraham Lincoln
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Those that hesitate, masturbate.
About how evolution can explain the existence of complex and diverse organisms, like humans:
“Winning the lottery is hard, but if you can play as many times as you want, you’ll end up winning”
“Its none of my business what other people think of me”
Changed my entire perspective on all social interactions for me.
“I don’t want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.”
“You don’t have to show up for every argument you’re invited to.”
Don’t sacrifice your self growth in the name of comfort
“The same boiling water that softens the potatoe, hardens the egg. It’s about what you are made of, not the circumstances.”
Comparison is the thief of joy.
“I’m homesick for a place that no longer exists” – Random YouTube comment regarding childhood and missing being young again
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”
― Jean-Luc Picard
Choose your battles wisely.
There’s always someone worse off than you.
“Don’t halfass two things. Whole-ass one thing.”
“Check your work before you hand it to the examiner”
My dad always says this. It applies to every facet of life not just school. ‘Checking your work’ is simply just double-checking you did something; locked the door when you left, sent that important email, etc. And ‘the examiner’ is the consequences; house getting robbed or not, getting in trouble with the boss or not. It has saved my ass multiple times over the years.
I’ve always loved the “be who you needed when you were younger”.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes, and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
Jean-Luc Picard
The definition of grace is to make people feel comfortable around you.
This changed me in my early 20’s.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“Don’t eat with people you wouldn’t starve with”
“What you’re not changing, you’re choosing”
“Find happiness in the small things in life”-my dad.
Tool me a while to understand what he meant.
I realize now all the small things in life there are to be happy about.
I’m happily married.
I have a house to live in.
I eat regularly
My child is healthy and doing well in life.
I have a vehicle to drive.
I’m not in crippling debt.
Makes sense now. Miss you dad!!
An old boss of mine (who spent the first half her life outside the US) when she heard us complaining about dumb shit:
“The problem with you all is that you have never had to grab up your babies and run for your lives”
Seemed brutal, but she meant it kindly. It pops into my head anytime I complain about dumb things and makes me appreciate my calm, peaceful life.
80% of your issues are caused by 20% of your problems
“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know shit.”
-MF DOOM
When someone shows you who they are believe them.