You know the old adage: Plant an expectation, reap a disappointment.
Elizabeth GilbertRead
Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself.
Interpretation
True home is found in the things and people we cherish most deeply.
This quote by Elizabeth Gilbert emphasizes that our true sense of belonging and home comes not from physical structures but from the love and connections we hold dear in our lives. It suggests that when we prioritize our passions and the things we love more than our own self-interests, we create our genuine 'home' in the world.
In practice
In a speech about community, you might mention how home is defined by love and connection.
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.
Christ not only died for all: He died for each.
It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.
but he only found her in the image that saturated his private and terrible solitude.
I am still learning about love. I thought I understood it--not just mother love, but the love for one's parents, for one's husband, and for one's laotong. I've experienced the other types of love--pity love, respectful love and gratitude love. But looking at our secret fan with its messages written between Snow Flower and me over many years, I see that I didn't value the most important love--deep-heart love.
Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.
Now I am going to reveal to you something which is very pure, a totally white thought. It is always in my heart; it blooms at each of my steps... The Dance is love, it is only love, it alone, and that is enough... I, then, it is amorously that I dance: to poems, to music but now I would like to no longer dance to anything but the rhythm of my soul.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.