It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered. ~Aldous Huxley

“Whatever happens, stay alive.
Don't die before you're dead.
Don't lose yourself, don't lose hope, don't loose direction. Stay alive, with yourself, with every cell of your body, with every fiber of your skin.
Stay alive, learn, study, think, read, build, invent, create, speak, write, dream, design.
Stay alive, stay alive inside you, stay alive also outside, fill yourself with colors of the world, fill yourself with peace, fill yourself with hope.
Stay alive with joy.
There is only one thing you should not waste in life,
and that's life itself... “🦋🌻💗

Virginia Woolf

This photo was taken by a vendor sitting on a sidewalk, and commented:
"This dog was sitting watching the customers who took food from me and gave me a currency note in exchange. After a while, he immediately got up and brought a piece of leaf, and looked at me with innocent and hopeful eyes. As if he wanted to eat something, in return, I fulfilled his wish."
This story is a perfect example of simplicity and innocence, where even an animal tries to understand human behavior.

I'm slowly learning that even if I react, it won't change anything, it won't make people suddenly love and respect me, it won't magically change their minds.

Sometimes it's better to just let things be, let people go, don't fight for closure, don't ask for explanations, don't chase answers and don't expect people to understand where you're coming from.

I'm slowly learning that life is better lived when you don't center it on what's happening around you and center it on what's happening inside you instead.

✍️: Rania 🎀
📸: Unknown

"The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days."
— Albert Camus, The Fall

“I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, thats all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen even loveless slavery, even war or death.”
― Albert Camus

I owe myself an apology.
For all the times I promised to forgive myself, only to bring it up again later. For clipping the wings of my own dreams before they ever had a chance to take flight. For thinking so little of myself, at the very moments I should have been standing up for myself. For the lies I swallowed while starving for truth. For believing that all the glass I walked on as a child was ever my fault. For withholding the same grace and second chances I so freely give others. For allowing the world to convince me that my heart was both too much and not enough. For all the days wasted pretending to be someone you would accept. For not living life more on my own terms. simply because I was afraid of making a mistake For punishing myself for far too long. For believing love was bloody and painful, and that I didn't deserve better. For every time I looked in the mirror and hated who I saw.
I could sit here listing every reason and way I wa wronged by others, but maybe more than anything, I owe myself an apology for not valuing this one. beautifully precious life of mine enough to know I'm worthy of greatness, the very best of everything.
And for that, I am sorry.

J. Raymond