Category: Words to live by

The meaning of life, according to Regina

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I’m a lover of quotes. I didn’t used to be, back when I was a bit younger, but as I’ve got older, I find so many that resonate. My pinterest boards are full of them!

Last week I went to Regina Spektor’s concert (squeee!!!) and since then, I have been listening to her music on high rotation. I realised tonight that her song, On the radio is really the quote of all quotes.

She’s basically saying that life is what it is and there’s nothing you can do about it, all you can do is to live it. Sometimes it’s happy and sometimes it’s sad. You just take what you get, do your best and go with it.

It’s also about loving yourself, then sharing that love with someone else and hoping that they learn to love the same way you did. But even if they don’t, you’ll still keep loving and passing on that love.

“This is how it works
You’re young until you’re not
You love until you don’t
You try until you can’t
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else’s heart
Pumping someone else’s blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don’t get harmed
But even if it does
You’ll just do it all again

By jove, I think she’s got it.
Regina Spektor

When it just makes sense

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You know how sometimes you read or hear something and it just makes perfect sense? Like someone has looked into your brain and articulated the thoughts swimming around in there? I’ve heard things that fall into this category lately. The best of the bunch are:

 

“Being a lover of holistic nutrition is not just about what we put in our mouths. It’s about integrating and balancing the nutritional, environmental, physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of life. It’s about feeding ourselves with real food, sunshine, clean water, healthy relationships, time in nature, fresh air, laughter & creative pastimes“. From Mind Food.

“Gratitude is not to be confused with indebtedness. Indebtedness is simply a feeling of obligation. And as a feeling, obligation has none of the mental health benefits of gratitude.” From Peppermint Magazine.

And as said by Anh Do’s Dad (quoted) in The Happiest Refugee:

“Always question your fear. There’s almost never a good reason to be scared.”

“There are only two times in life. There’s now and there’s too late”.

 

Have any words really resonated with you lately?



Quotes from Paul Watson

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I’m a bit of a fan of Paul Watson. He’s the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society after all.

In particular I love how he says:

  • “We’re just a conceited naked ape, but in our minds we’re some ‘divine legend’ and we see ourselves as some sort of god, thinking we can decide what will live and what will die, what will be saved and what will be destroyed, but honestly we’re just a bunch of primates out of control.”
  • “You can’t rely on the Government to make any decent, social change. We’re now in the midst of a 3rd World War, but this time the enemy is ourselves, and the objective is to save the planet FROM ourselves. There’s no hope for masses of humanity to do anything – they never have, they never will. All social change comes from the passion and intervention of individuals or small groups of individuals. Slavery wasn’t ended by any government or any institution. Women got the right to vote not because of any government. The civil rights movement, the same thing. India with Mahatma Gandhi, South Africa with Nelson Mandela. Again, it’s always individuals. You need those individuals with the passion and the energy to get involved. In fact, I don’t know of any government or any institutions that are doing anything to solve any of these problems. All over the world, all I am seeing is individuals and non-government organisations that are passionately involved in protecting ecosystems and species, and that’s where I see some optimism. That’s where I see results are happening.”
  • “We should be pirates of compassion hunting down, hunting down and destroying pirates of profit.”

Love him.

Ain’t that the truth

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“You get to a certain point in life where you understand that the days are getting shorter, and you can’t put things off thinking you’ll get to them someday. If you really want to do them, you better do them. There are simply too many people getting sick, and sooner or later you might. So I’m very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so you can do a great deal of it.”

Nora Ephron