Eternal wisdom

Don’t answer the foolish arguments of fools, or you will become as foolish as they are.

~ Proverbs 26:4

Who needs to be in a coma to ask?

Who am I?

Where am I going?

~ Tony Soprano, while in a coma, in The Sopranos

I know the feeling

You do your job and you go cry alone.

~ Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

This kind of makes me sad

Learn what the magician knows, and nothing is magic anymore. 

~ Richard Bach

Every person, all the events in your life, are there because your have drawn them there.

What you choose to do with them is up to you.

~ Richard Bach

Finders keepers, losers weepers

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding the truth.

~ Ludwig Borne

Been there. Done that...

And I'm under no illusions that she could solve what ails me, but when I'm with her, the world just feels...

...more interesting.

~ Coach Beard, on Ted Lasso

Troubling, indeed

In all my happiest memories, I'm single.

That troubles me. 

~ Coach Beard, in Ted Lasso

My new credo

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,

and when we escape like squirrels

turning in the cages of our personality

and get into the forests again, 

we shall shiver with cold and fright 

but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves.

Cool unlying life will rush in, 

and passion will make our bodies taut with power,

we shall stamp our feet with new power

and old things will fall down.

We shall laugh, 

and institutions will curl up like burnt paper. 

~ DH Lawrence

I see application today also...

This is an old joke from the Soviet Union: 

Two dirt-poor peasants, Igor and Boris, are just barely scratching a living out of their tiny plots of land. 

The only difference being that Boris has a goat and Igor doesn’t. 

Then a fairy appears to Igor one day and says, “I’ll grant you any wish.” 

And he says, “I wish that Boris’ goat should die."

Let me ask you a question!

You can tell how clever a man is by his answers,

but how wise a man is by his questions.

~ Read on the interwebs

Great truths…

Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the Universe. 

~ Albert Einstein

My new mantra…

Be curious,

not judgemental.

~ Walt Whitman

Maybe it is not too late…

When you want to do something, do it right away. 

Do it when you can.

It’s the only way to live a life without regrets.

I’m working on that…

 Comparison is the thief of joy

~ found on the interwebs

Truer words were never spoken

“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”

~ Dixon Steele (played by Humphrey Bogart) in In a Lonely Place 

Woof!

Dogs are barking,

but the train keeps going.

~ Finnish saying, told by Valtteri Bottas, my favorite F1 driver 

Before that, you have to enter the race!

To finish first, you first have to finish.

~ Ron Denis, Formula One driver

Applies to life, too!

Slowly, slowly, catch the monkey

~ Jackie Stewart, on successful racing strategy

For those of us that frequently feel like cannon fodder:

Once you're inside the cannon, 

There's only one way out. 

~ Dake, on Billions

The hard part is getting started...

As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning.

~ Barbara Sher

If only...

 If you can take me anywhere, take me to the depths of your soul.

~ Michael Bliss

My latest favorite saying

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving.

But like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Somewhere, DEEP inside of me...

 I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember.  

Somewhere inside of me there will always be the person I am tonight.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, in Tender is the Night

My goal: to not be a fool...

 Our world is not divided by race, color, gender, or religion.

Our word is divided into wise people and fools.

And fools divide themselves by race,  color, or religion.

~ Nelson Mandela

Good advice. Soon, very soon...

Be a traveler, not a tourist.

~ Anthony Bourdain

relatable grafitti...

You were not here last night,

and I could not sleep.

Will you be here tonight?

~ found scratched on an ancient Egyptian wall excavated near Cleopatra's tomb

During times of universal deceit, speaking the truth becomes a revolutionary act. 

~ George Orwell

Oooooo, Gandhi was spicy!

Oh, I don’t reject Christ. I love Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.  

If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.

~ Albert Einstein

If a cop follows you for 500 miles, you're going to get a ticket.

~ Warren Buffet 

A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass. 

~ Sioux Indian saying

The meaning of life is to find your gift.

The purpose of life is to give it away.

~ Pablo Picasso

Consistency is the true foundation of trust.

Either keep your promises or do not make them.

~ Roy T. Bennett

I'm pretending to be happy

We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Tru' 'dat!

 Ignore anyone who doubts you.

~ Kevin to Nina (in the Heights)

A Livable Level of Decency

 Community is everything, and fostering trust amongst each other is everything.  

Whatever you guys argue about the specifics, we got to trust that there will be 

a livable level of decency.

~ Dave Chapelle

The importance of community

If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together. 

Repetition is the mother of all learning,

the father of action, 

and that makes it the architect of accomplishment.

~ Zig Zieglar

Sound advice

Son, I want to leave you with one word of advice:

Grow dead inside.  Leave your body!

~ Homer Simpson to Bart

 Three day waiting period?  But I'm angry NOW!

~ Homer Simpson, trying to buy a gun

I was going to add more, but I'll leave it at that...

 I wish I was in love...

Clever NASA Engineers!

"dare mighty things" - encoded in the parachute used in the February 2021 Mars landing of Perserverence.

From a Teddy Roosevelt speech: 

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

~ Theodore Roosevelt, 1899

For the love of God, man, TURN THE PAGE!

The World is a book, and those who don't travel read only one page.

~ Augustine of Hippo

Watch out for the deep end!

Be careful! 

Love will put rocks in your pocket, and lure you to the deep end of the creek.

~ Phil, on 'Call me Kat'

Pitter patter

When a friend asks a friend for help, you help ‘em

~ Letterkenny

Looking for a sharp person...

As irons sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another 

~ Proverbs 27:17

Tai chi wisdom

Teacher emanates.

Student emulates.

Makes sense

Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not.

~ Mark Rippetoe

Zoom Zoom

Being a racing driver means you are racing with other people and if you no longer go for a gap that exists you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing.

~ Ayrton Senna

I see you, baby Jesus! (it is that baby Yoda?)

If you don't see the baby Jesus waving at you - at both the apex AND trackout - you either don't have the line right, you're giving up more speed than you should, or both.

~ Lance Schall

[sigh...]

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. 

~ Carl Sagan

Keep Looking Up...

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The man knew a thing or two about his subject

On hiking - 

"I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. 

Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, 'A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' 

And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them." 

~ John Muir

A Zen koan for our times...

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

January 6, 2020

"Those who can make you believe absurdities

can make you commit atrocities"

~ Voltaire

I know what you are, but what am I?

 There is a difference between being alone and being lonely.

~ John Lennon

 

A man walks down the street

He says, "Why am I soft in the middle, now?

Why am I soft in the middle?

The rest of my life is so hard

I need a photo-opportunity

I want a shot at redemption

Don't want to end up a cartoon

In a cartoon graveyard.

~ “You Can Call Me Al” Paul Simon

Tai Chi in the age of Covid-19

When you practice alone, remember - you are practicing with all the beings in the Universe

~ Kim Kanzelberger

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

~ Nelson Mandela