Ten Quotes from My Notes

I have a habit of writing down paragraphs and quotes that touch my heart. Here are ten from my notes, picked at random.

They come from very different places: a rock musician, a physician, a mystic, a 13th-century Japanese hermit, a novelist. But read together, they probably say more about my current state of mind than anything I could write directly. You could call them my mind’s data.

I’ve grouped them loosely, by what they seem to be talking about.

Running from ourselves

I start with Keith Richards, because his two lines pull against each other. One refuses to look back. The other admits how much effort we put into escaping who we are.

1. I don’t do regrets. Regrets are pointless. It’s too late for regrets. You’ve already done it, haven’t you? You’ve lived your life. No point wishing you could change it.

   — Keith Richards

2. All the contortions we go through just not to be ourselves for a few hours.

   — Keith Richards

What we reach for instead of love

Gabor Maté’s work sits close to what I study: why people get caught in habits that hurt them (I wrote about it here). Read next to Baldwin, these three say one thing in different ways. When love is missing, we fill the gap with something else.

1. Addiction is always a poor substitute for love.

   — Dr. Gabor Maté

2. Trauma is an invisible force that shapes our lives. It shapes the way we live, the way we love and the way we make sense of the world. It is the root of our deepest wounds.

   — Dr. Gabor Maté

3. People who can’t make love, make money.

   — James Baldwin, 1968

Being, not becoming

Three traditions, centuries apart, with a similar message: stop chasing a future version of yourself. The river is never the same water, and neither are we.

1. Be, don’t try to become.

   — Osho

2. ゆく河の流れは絶えずして、しかももとの水にあらず。

   The flow of the river never ceases, and yet the water is never the same water.

   — Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki (1212)

3. Be your own light.

   — The Buddha

Learning to see

The last two are the longest and the hardest. The first says to work on yourself before setting out to save anyone else. The second is a list worth living by.

1. In order to be able to help people one must first learn to help oneself. A great number of people become absorbed in thought and feelings about helping others simply out of laziness. They are too lazy to work on themselves; and at the same time it is very pleasant for them to think that they are able to help others. This is being false and insincere with oneself. If a man looks at himself as he really is, he will not begin to think of helping other people: he will be ashamed to think about it.

   — Purushottama

2. To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

   — Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Just the track

I don’t mean that these quotes are good or bad in themselves. They are just the track. A few years from now, if I look back at what I was reading and writing down, this page will be my reference for this period, like a flashback.

And as they say: in the end, everything will be alright. If it’s not alright, it’s not the end.