36 Questions for Creating Closeness

At many times in my #life I’ve felt like I was alone and this made me feel extremely sad and lost. However in contrast, the really best times of my life have been where I’ve bridged that gap and managed to develop a genuine and real #connection with someone and formed a meaningful #friendship or #relationship. Here are 36 questions that help to create closeness.

Comforting Thought: The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Comforting Thought: Getting Real, the Velveteen Rabbit

“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.”
— Marcus Aurelius #quote #stoic #philosophy #soul #life

Comforting Thought: James Baldwin on why art is important

If you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them too – the terms with which they are connected to other people. This has happened to every one of us, I’m sure. You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discovered that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevski. This is a very great liberation for the suffering person, who always thinks that they are alone. This is why art is important. ~ James Baldwin

Comforting Thought: Throw open the windows of your soul

“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.”
— Marcus Aurelius #quote #stoic #philosophy #soul #life

Comforting Thought: Whistling in the dark

“Art would not be important if life were not important. And life is important. Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.” James Baldwin #quote #philosophy #art

Comforting Thought: The Light that Burns Bright

“There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail; there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.”

~ Leo Tolstoy
#Tolstoy #writing #books #bookquote #quote #philosophy #hope #healing #psychology #humanity #philosophy

Comforting Thought: Sunrise by Mary Oliver

“I thought how the sun blazes for everyone just so joyfully as it rises
under the lashes of my own eyes, and I thought I am so many!” – Sunrise by Mary Oliver

Comforting Thought: Describing versus experiencing places

“Describing something is like using it – it destroys; the colours wear off, the corners lose their definition, and in the end what’s been described begins to fade, to disappear. This applies most of all to places. Enormous damage has been done by travel literature – a veritable scourge, an epidemic. Guidebooks have conclusively ruinedContinue reading “Comforting Thought: Describing versus experiencing places”

Comforting Thought The challenge of a life’s time and a lifetime

It may be when we no longer know what to do,

We have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go,

We have begun our real journey.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is a poet, farmer, writer and activist.