You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.
Cheryl StrayedRead
Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.
Interpretation
Let go of outdated self-perceptions that no longer reflect who you are.
This quote by Cheryl Strayed highlights the importance of self-acceptance and personal growth. It encourages individuals to release their attachment to past identities or beliefs that hinder their joy, emphasizing the need to embrace change and recognize one's true self, rather than clinging to outdated notions that prevent personal happiness.
In practice
During a motivational talk about self-acceptance and personal growth.
You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.
The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna. The real work of deep grief is making a home there.
I walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle.
There is a path toward the light. The one that goes blink, blink, blink inside your chest when you know what you're doing is right. Listen to it. Trust it. Let it make you stronger than you are.
Each evening, I ached for the shelter of my tent, for the smallest sense that something was shielding me from the entire rest of the world, keeping me safe not from danger, but from vastness itself. I loved the dim, clammy dark of my tent, the cozy familiarity of the way I arranged my few belongings all around me each night.
Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.
The Beauty of the Mountain is hidden for all those who try to discover it from the top, supposing that, one way or an other, one can reach this place directly. The Beauty of the Mountain reveals only to those who climbed it.
All too often, we spend our days waiting for the ideal path to appear in front of us. We forget that paths are made by walking, not waiting.
Keep my word positive. Words become my behaviors. Keep my behaviors positive. Behaviors become my habits. Keep my habits positive. Habits become my values. Keep my values positive. Values become my destiny.
Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give.
I just thought I‘d never look good in what everybody else wore. So there’s no point trying. You just have to do what suits you, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t look like everybody else. Be you. That’s our gift and we’ve got to celebrate that, but it does take ages. I was wracked with self-doubt for years. I get spasms of it even now – I’m not indelibly self-confident.
The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.
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