[Image: “Survey Marker (Do Not Remove),” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

Don’t worry about things. Don’t push. Just do your work and you’ll survive. The important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow. All you should worry about is whether you’re doing it every day and whether you’re having fun with it. If you’re not having fun, find the reason. Perhaps you should be doing something else.

(Ray Bradbury [source])

…and:

What I tell my students, when they feel singularly unfortunate to be born in this moment, is this is your moment, the moment your soul showed up incarnate. In this world. It is an astonishing moment to be alive. You could have been born into a lull — instead you were born into a tipping point. It’s your one life and you’ve entered it at a flexion point — a point when everything you do matters. How often in history does a soul get to live in such an era? Don’t waste it. Show up for it. With everything you’ve got. Some will invent, some will organize, some will witness, some will grieve, some will console. Live this life now. Even if in fury and grief, live it. You don’t want to die not having lived. It’s incredibly easy to find a way around experience rather than through it. But you will have cheated yourself out of your only possession: your life. You are here now. Now is the time to live fully, not hide, not escape.

(Jorie Graham [source])

Not from whiskey river:

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, [*]
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to day,
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to Setting.

That Age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

(Robert Herrick [source])

…and:

If you do not liberate yourself in this lifetime, what lifetime will you wait for? Once this day has passed, that much of your life is gone too. With each passing thought, observe the impermanence of the appearances of the world and give up thinking there will be a tomorrow. With each step tread the Great Way of the mind source, and do not turn to another road.

You should let go your hand and footholds, as if plunging off a precipitous cliff.

(Man-An, translated by Thomas Cleary [source])

…and:

He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he’s been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.

(Margaret Atwood [source])

…and:

Each person allocates his or her limited attention either by focusing it intentionally like a beam of energy… or by diffusing it in desultory, random movements. The shape and content of life depend on how attention has been used. Entirely different realities will emerge depending on how it is invested.

(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [source])

__________

* Saw an interesting theory recently, about Charles Foster Kane’s famous “last word” at the beginning of Citizen Kane. To wit: while we know that “Rosebud” was the name of Kane’s childhood sled, maybe the reason Orson Welles (well, more like screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz) chose that name, when he could have chosen pretty much any name, was deliberately to reference the Herrick poem. I’m not convinced. And of course there’s no way really to know, one way or another. Interesting idea, though!

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