how strange it is to be anything at all

"If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being “asocial” or “irrational” in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to “explain,” which usually implies that the explanation be “understood,” i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation."

- The Art of Being (via 13052116012004150519)

(via reflectionofthoughts)

"If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity. Instead of being an individual, they are a multitude. Like the color white that includes all colors, they tend to bring together the entire range of human possibilities within themselves. Creativity allows for paradox, light, shadow, inconsistency, even chaos –and creative people experience both extremes with equal intensity."

- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (via psychotherapy)

(via reflectionofthoughts)

"I will love you not just for your wit and talent and beauty, but simply because you are you, with no strings attached. I love you for who you are deep in your soul, not for the color of your eyes or the length of your legs or the size of your checkbook. The longing is that the lover admire us stripped of our external assets, appreciating the essence of our being without accomplishments, ready to repeat the unconditional love said by some to exist between parent and child. The real self is what one can freely choose to be, and if a birthmark arises on our forehead or age withers us or recession bankrupts us, then we must be excused for accidents that have damaged what is only our surface. And even if we are beautiful and rich, then we do not wish to be loved on account of these things, for they may fail us, and with them, love. I would prefer you to compliment me on my brain than on my face, but if you must, then I would rather you comment on my smile [motor and muscle-controlled] then on my nose [static and tissue-based]. The desire is that I be loved even if I lost everything, leaving nothing but “me,” this mysterious “me” taken to be the self at its weakest, most vulnerable point. Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test. Do you love me stripped of everything that might be lost, for only the things I will have forever?"

- Alain de Botton, “On Love: A Novel” (via lifeinpoetry)

(via reflectionofthoughts)

"When we let our heart break open, a sweetness starts to flow from us like nectar."

- John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening (via kimjungho)

(via reflectionofthoughts)

"There is only one important point you must keep in your mind and let it be your guide. No matter what people call you, you are just who you are. Keep to this truth. You must ask yourself how is it you want to live your life. We live and we die, this is the truth that we can only face alone. No one can help us, not even the Buddha. So consider carefully, what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?"

- Dalai Lama XIV (via vanished)

"I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter and to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."

- Leo Rosten (via theyoungradical)

(Source: idterab, via existentialmau)

"When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours. And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful?"

- (via existentialmau)

"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart."

-

Fyodor Dostoevsky

(via reflectionofthoughts)

(via existentialmau)

"I confused things with their names: that is belief."

- Jean Paul Sarte (via existentialmau)

"Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose."

- Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is A Humanism (via substancem)

(via existentialmau)