All Is Well in the Great Mess

In a chaotic modern world seemingly designed to burn everyone out, slowing down is a profoundly positive act of rebellion.

-- Unknown Author

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Ergib dich nicht der Stimmung dessen, der dich beleidigt, und folge nicht dem Weg, auf den er dich schleppen möchte.

-- Marcus Aurelius

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

"If you are depressed, you are living in the past.
If you are anxious, you are living in the future.
If you are at peace, you are living in the moment."

-- Junia Bretas, West Los Angeles Buddhist Temple Bulletin, volume 57, July-August 2014

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Source: Robert Frost, "A Group of Poems", The Atlantic Monthly (August 1915).

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Source: Henley, William Ernest (July 17, 1889). A book of verses. New York.

“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”

-— Seneca, Letters From a Stoic

“Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done.

The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.”

-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."

„Nicht wer wenig hat, sondern wer viel wünscht, ist arm.“

-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Heute habe ich Marion Giebels Übersetzung von Senecas "Das Leben ist kurz" hinzugefügt. Der Text ist auch über den Menüpunkt "Stoicism" erreichbar.

Today I have added Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations", translated by Gregory Hays. You can also access it via the menu bar in the "Stoicism" section.

Source: A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1943)