Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.
Douglas CouplandRead
I'm always looking for things that are so incredibly present that they become invisible.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the idea that things which are ever-present can become overlooked or taken for granted.
Douglas Coupland's quote suggests that in our daily lives, we often overlook the significance of things and experiences that are continuously around us. The notion that something can be so constant that it becomes 'invisible' invites us to reflect more deeply on our surroundings and appreciate the subtle yet profound elements that contribute to our existence.
In practice
In a speech about mindfulness, one could use this quote to illustrate the importance of being present.
Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.
...we're told by TV and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change--and that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or think. they become messes and tend to remain messes.
When the world throws you too much information, the only way you can stay sane or survive is to look for pattern recognition. Amidst all the blurs, is there a constellation that emerges, is there a straight line that's emerging?
I'm not patient - and I'm getting more impatient as I get older - but I am disciplined about writing, and I want that on my tombstone: 'He wasn't patient, but he was disciplined.'
If you waste five minutes of time a day, over the course of a year that adds up to one full work day. Think of five wasted minutes as a slow-release holiday drug. Savour it.
When someone tells you they’ve just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they’re locked into jobs they hate; that they’re broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they’re fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It’s profoundly depressing.
One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
Do not travel to other dusty lands, forsaking your own sitting place; if you cannot find the truth where you are now, you will never find it.
It is the worst oppression, that is done by colour of justice
If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.
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