I knew it was you was when you told me that you were scared but ready.  Fear drives people out but it drove you into me. 

tblaberge:

We need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners, we need to be better listeners.

Compassion can make this world beautiful.

qtiest:

The fjords of Norway are truly unreal… like you’re traveling on passageways through huge ancient worlds

I love this SO much.  

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners

it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone.”

giraffepoliceforce:

“Are you really going to vote for Clinton just because she isn’t Trump?”

Yes? I would literally elect Chef Boyardee because he isn’t Trump.

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

— This is Water.
David Foster Wallace