Tian Dayton

In my quiet moments I allow myself to fully entertain my own thoughts. I
learn and grow in layers. When I have come finally to decode what feels
like garbled data and to understand more clearly what I am seeing,
feeling and hearing, then I am ready to move through another layer. Some
days, learning how to live feels like too hard a struggle, but then I
consider the alternatives - living a hollow and meaningless life,
wasting or even resenting life, living stupidly and blundering
mindlessly along, living only on the surface, never letting anything or
anyone really touch or move me is certainly no easier. When I consider
the alternatives, it puts the struggle in perspective; I understand why
I carry on.

The struggle is worthwhile.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a
journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which
no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we
come at last to regard the world.
Marcel Proust

Today I know that what I accumulate in my life is of no account if I
lose my spirit, my self, my soul. I can enjoy the things of the world
when I see them for what they are and do not ask them to be more than
they are or to give me what they cannot give. They are meant to enhance
my pleasure, not to be the source of it. It is my knowledge and
awareness of that part of me which is infinite that is my true source of
peace, pleasure, happiness and serenity. When I am in full possession of
this inner self, which is also connected to the universal self, then I
am in a position to take pleasure in the world around me.

I am that which never dies.

We brought nothing into this world. And it is certain we carry nothing
out of it.
1 Timothy 6:7

I am not an island onto myself. Isolating myself from those I am
intimate with is impossible. All I accomplish through this self-imposed
separation is the illusion of isolation. I share space with those who
are close to me. Each of us knows what is going on, each of us feels the
atmosphere of the other. I will be willing to know how I affect people
today on both a verbal and, even more important, on a nonverbal level. I
will take responsibility not only for what I say, but for who I am in
the alive and vibrating feeling atmosphere around me. The atmosphere
around me is alive and carries my silent message to all whom I
encounter; it is what others I am in relationship with know and live
with.

I own what I think and feel.

Now if you apply the wave-particle metaphor to human relationship and
think that we are both particle, individuals in our own space and time
and waves, things that can overlap and combine with others, then you
have a basis for seeing how we could get “into” relationships with other
people.
Dianne Zohar

Today I accept and understand that life is both pain and joy. Sometimes
recovery creates the impression that one day I should be free of pain,
and I feel “unrecovered” when I still have problems in my life. The goal
is not to be free from pain, which is a given in life, but to live with
pain differently. In recovery the real lesson is not how to avoid
problems but how to work them through and let them go more quickly.
Problems are a part of life, but are not all of life. There is as much
happiness and beauty in life as ugliness. Recovery is about not avoiding
either - it’s about eliminating old debris so I can experience life in
the present and gain wisdom from a painful past.

I accept life on its own terms.

Man was made for joy and woe, And when this we rightly know Through the
world we safely go.
William Blake

This will be my only lifetime as the person I am today. I will only pass
through this day once. What I do with this day I will only be able to do
once. If I waste the entire day, it will be a day wasted; if I walk
blindly through it, it will be a day unseen; if I hate it, dread it or
wish it away, it will be recorded in my brain as a terrible day. In any
case, I will never have this day back to do over again. How I conduct
myself in it will be all that I have to carry away with me; how the way
that the moment transpires will be what is written into the diary of my
personal experience, the diary contained within my mind.

This is my only opportunity to live this day.

Through this toilsome world, alas! Once and only once I pass; If a
kindness I may show, If a good deed I may do To a suffering fellow man,
Let me do it while I can. No delay, for it is plain I shall not pass
this way again.
Author unknown