Family Life

They... threw themselves into the interests of the rest, but each plowed his or her own furrow.
Their thoughts, their little passions and hopes and desires, all ran along separate lines.
Family life is like this - animated, but collateral.

 ~Rose Macaulay

New Beginnings

Every day is a new beginning. Treat it that way.
Stay away from what might have been,
and look at what can be.

- Marsha Petrie Sue

Time

Don’t say you don’t have enough time.

You have exactly the same number of hours per day
that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo,
Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci,
Thomas Jefferson, and
Albert Einstein.

– Jackson Brown, Life’s Little Instruction Book

Service

Heaven is eternal - the earth endures.
Why do heaven and earth last forever?
They do not live for themselves only.
This is the secret of their durability.

For this reason the wise sage puts himself last
and so ends up ahead.
He stays a witness to life,
so he endures.

Serve the needs of others,
and all your own needs will be fulfilled.
Through selfless action, fulfillment is attained.

7TH VERSE - TAO TE CHING

Writing

We write to taste life twice,
in the moment and in retrospect.
- Anaïs Nin

Challenge

Always do what you are afraid to do.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Optimism

Optimism and pessimism are mere matters of optics,
of how you look at things,
and that can change from day to day, or
with a new prescription for your glasses --
or with a new set of ideological filters.

- George Weigel

Life

Life is either a daring adventure,
or nothing.

- Helen Keller

Love

"Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Use, Exercise, and Express

Remember:
Courage, unused, diminishes.
Commitment, unexercised, wanes.
Love, unshared, dissipates.

— Anthony Robbins

Purpose

The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.

― Michael de Montaigne

Upcoming Year

May your COMING YEAR
be filled with magic and dreams 
and good madness.
I hope you read some FINE books
and kiss someone who thinks
you're WonderFUL, and don't forget to
MAKE some art --
Write or draw or BUILD or sing 
or live as only you can.
And I HOPE, somewhere
in the next year,
you surprise yourself.

 ― Neil Gaiman

Begin

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose – not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.

-Anne Sullivan

Born Again

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page.

-Henry Ward Beecher

Health

The secret of health for both mind and body
is not to mourn for the past,
not to worry about the future, or
not to anticipate troubles,
but to live the present moment
wisely and earnestly.

- Siddartha Guatama Buddha

Experience

Experience is not what happens to a man.
It is what a man does
with what happens to him.

- Aldous Huxley

Don't Die...

Don’t die with your music still inside you.

Listen to your intuitive inner voice and find what passion stirs your soul.

Listen to that inner voice, and don’t get to the end of your life and say,
 "What if my whole life has been wrong?".

 - Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Abuse

Those who abuse use blaming to confuse and control you. They use blaming to keep you in line and conform to what they want to do. They use it to punish you because  their reality they believe in is not a "kind person's" reality.

If you ever experienced the abuse in any way, realize that what you felt about yourself was a projection from another person's reality, and you bought into it at that time.

You can stop it at any time if you're willing to.

- Neville Goddard

Power

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

 - Marcus Aurelius

Circle of Life

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.

-  Ivy Baker Priest