You know the old adage: Plant an expectation, reap a disappointment.
Elizabeth GilbertRead
Your fear is the most boring thing about you.
Interpretation
Fear is a common experience, but letting it define you is uninteresting.
This quote by Elizabeth Gilbert suggests that fear is a universal emotion that many people experience, yet allowing fear to dictate your actions and identity is dull and uninspired. Instead of letting fear limit your potential, embracing challenges and stepping outside of your comfort zone can lead to a more vibrant and fulfilling life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming personal challenges.
You know the old adage: Plant an expectation, reap a disappointment.
Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.
I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either, but profound happiness, even soaring happiness. And what could possibly bring a person more soaring happiness than romantic love.
When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being--and a normal one, at that?
And when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt - this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life no matter how slight.
But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilling yearnings.
I've been in this struggle for many years now. I understand racism. I understand that there are a lot of people in this country who don't care about the problems of the inner city. We have to fight every day that we get up for every little thing that we get. And so I keep struggling.
Non-violence is backed by the theory of soul-force in which suffering is courted in the hope of ultimately winning over the opponent. But what happens when such an attempt fail to achieve the object? It is here that soul-force has to be combined with physical force so as not to remain at the mercy of tyrannical and ruthless enemy.
Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him... the better off we all are.
For me, survival is the ability to cope with difficulties, with circumstances, and to overcome them.
Once working people discover that, collectively, we have more power than we do as individual silos, then we become an incredibly powerful force. But I think that there are powers that be that are invested in us remaining divided along racial lines, along economic lines.
I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.
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