No Regret, No Anxiety

"People don't realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind."

— Eckhart Tolle

Things Big and Little

"Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is."

— Thomas Szasz

Calm Your Space

Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.

— Saint Francis de Sales

Whom to Please

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

—e. e. cummings

Clear the Mind

 

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.’

— Thomas Jefferson

On a Street Corner, Alive

“It will be quite a good Christmas, the merchants predict. Everyone can afford to spend at least something, except, maybe, some of the young hustlers (recognizable at once to experienced eyes like George’s) who stand scowling on the street corners or staring into shops with the maximum of peripheral vision.

“George is very far, right now, from sneering at any of these fellow creatures. They may be crude and mercenary and dull and low, but he is proud, is glad, is almost indecently gleeful to be able to stand up and be counted in their ranks — the ranks of that marvelous minority, The Living. They don’t know their luck, these people on the sidewalk, but George knows his — for a little while at least — because he is freshly returned from the icy presence of The Majority, which Doris is about to join. 

“I am alive, he says to himself, I am alive! And life-energy surges hotly through him, and delight, and appetite. How good to be in a body — even this old beat-up carcass — that still has warm blood and live semen and rich marrow and wholesome flesh! The scowling youths on the corners see him as a dodderer, no doubt, or at best as a potential score. Yet he still claims a distant kinship with the strength of their young arms and shoulders and loins. For a few bucks he could get any one of them to climb into the car, ride back with him to his house, strip off butch leather jacket, shirt and cowboy boots and take part — a naked, sullen young athlete — in the wrestling bout of his pleasure. But George doesn’t want the bought unwilling bodies of these boys. He wants to rejoice in his own body — the tough triumphant body of a survivor. The body that has outlived Jim and is going to outlive Doris.”

— Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man, 1964

Where and When Are We?

In the 21st century, luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four of those things.

Now that I’m in my 70s, it occurs to me that my actual job, for the rest of my life, is to have some peace of mind and enjoy myself. 

I mean to work at that with some determination, whatever the vicissitudes that come my way.