2026 note from JP: I quoted this snipped about 4 years ago as I was going through some post-Covid challenges, fuck Covid. The excerpt below is beautiful and still resonates but then there’s Sam Harris. Who one can compare to J. K. Rowling in that they built a safe space for folks only to then reveal they have some violent views towards others. Yes to meditation, yes to encouraging kids to read. No to hateful rhetoric.
Needed a pick-me-up, and this snippet from the Waking Up app hit the spot. Here’s my flawed attempt at transcribing it.
The whole point of life is not to arrive, but to begin again.
Because everything you’ve done, or not done, is now just a memory.
And everything you are telling yourself about the future, is a half-truth at best.
Because however good or bad things seem: nothing lasts.
Because there’s so much more to life than talking to yourself, about yourself.
Because this moment, is wide open. The world itself, is wide open.
And no one knows how good life can be.
Because in this moment, there’s always an opportunity, to stop looking over your own shoulder.
In this, living instance, and only here, this is where you can lose the mask that you’ve mistaken for your own face.
This next moment it’s truly new and totally unexplored,
And that’s always the case.
So, wherever you’ve come from, however hard things have seem, whoever is in your life, and no longer in it.
Whatever has been done, or left undone,
Just begin again…