#awake

If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective. We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe. Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day—the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening? It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we’re miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn’t seasoned just the way we like. When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we’re up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first. In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter. ↗

— Mark Nepo

#enlightenment #happiness #joy #mark-nepo #misery

The poet knows himself only on the condition that things resound in him, and that in him, at a single awakening, they and he come forth together out of sleep. ↗

— Jacques Maritain

#come #condition #forth #him #himself

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#awake #dream #intentionally #most #people

To be on 'Coast to Coast,' you have to be willing to stay awake in the middle of the night. But in return you get a great audience of millions of listeners all across the nation. ↗

— George Noory

#audience #awake #coast #get #great

He bit his lip in a manner which immediately awakened my maternal sympathy, and I helped him bite it. ↗

— S. J. Perelman

#bit #bite #helped #him #his

He would use amphetamines to stay awake because he would have late night maneuvers that would go way into the early morning hours and he was given pills to stay up for the long hours. ↗

— Priscilla Presley

#because #early #early morning #given #go

When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world. ↗

— George Saunders

#awake #aware #come #i #just

The experience awakened 'my tremendous musical ambition, which has never subsided to this day. ↗

— Georg Solti

#awakened #day #experience #musical #never

I shall now proceed to my own experience, which hath truly convinced me, the Lord is awakened as one out of sleep; and the voice of the Lord will shake terribly the earth. ↗

— Joanna Southcott

#convinced #earth #experience #hath #i

At the beginning of the day, when you're doing a show like this, you want to entertain and you want people to have a really fun time...but at the end of the day you want them to walk out feeling changed and taking something more away from it...and it's really kind of rare that you get to do that all in the same night. ↗

— John Gallagher

#change