The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer?
I'm not prescribing non-doing as a universal response to our problems. Sometimes, something obviously needs to be done. And we retreat into a spiritual or meditative state that we fancy up by calling it mindfulness, but really it's an unhealthy detachment and a shrinking back from life. But culturally, it's much more common to be trapped in habits of reaction, whether on a systemic level or on a personal level. That's where the non-doing comes in, which is something that we don't really have room for. I think that it's something we need to embrace as part of the creative process.
I spent the first half of my life making money and the second half of my life giving it away to do the most good and the least harm.
I always thought that I would spend the first half of my life making money so I can spend the second half of my life giving it all away. And one of the defining moments of my life was when I realized that I could do both at the same time with TOMS.
And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives, Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake, How if our waking life, like that of sleep, Be all a dream in that eternal life To which we wake not till we sleep in death
I believe the second half of one's life is meant to be better than the first half. The first half is finding out how you do it. And the second half is enjoying it.
ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.
Death is not a curse to be outwitted no matter the cost. Death is the natural pivot on which life turns, without which life as we know it could not be. A pro-life-support position is not always a pro-life position. When we can no longer hold on with purpose, to let go is to die with dignity and grace.
I think we all have something in our life's experience that makes us feel different. It's whether we have a gay parent or we have an alcoholic mother or maybe we don't know our father. And it's something that we feel bad about initially because we think we're abnormal. What's abnormal is our assumption that there's something called 'normal.'
Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong.
The first principle of ethical power is Purpose. By purpose, I don't mean your objective or intention-something toward which you are always striving. Purpose is something bigger. It is the picture you have of yourself-the kind of person you want to be or the kind of life you want to lead.
He slipped away slowly, withdrawing from this world by small, imperceptible degrees, and in the end it was as if he were a drop of water evaporating in the sun, shrinking and shrinking until at last he wasn’t there anymore.
You have to understand the purpose of life. The purpose of life is to do something which will live forever.
For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence? It is true that society in general does not help one accept this interpretation of the second half of life.
The time necessary for the disappearance of half the atoms, called the half-life, is a fundamental characteristic of each radio-element; according to the substance, the value of the half-life varies between a fraction of a second and millions of years.
The definition of 'morbid' is an unhealthy preoccupation with death. Unfortunately, there's no word to mean the perfectly healthy preoccupation with death, which is what I have.