“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.” ~ James Baldwin

Why do we tend to let ourselves do only the things we think we’re good at, trained at, educated in, experienced with, experts at?

How do we do let go of this constraint? Why don’t we do it more often? And what happens when we do?

Which is to say: Don’t restrict yourself to doing only what you’re good at. Try doing something you yearn to do. Something that excites you. Something you may think you’re not good at but you’ve always wanted to try.

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, just think of sleeping with a mosquito in the room.” ~ Tenzin Gyatzo, 14th Dalai Lama

Also, from @SwissMiss: The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world: Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.

“There is no time left for anything but to make peacework a dimension of our every waking activity.” ~ Elise Boulding

“War will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited. Love will overflow every sanctuary given it. Truth will grow where the fertilizer that nourished it is also truth. Faith will be its own reward.” ~ Alice Walker

http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful

“If peace is what every government says it seeks and peace is the yearning of every heart, why aren’t we studying it and teaching it in schools?” ~ Colman McCarthy
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
      
 
 
—Colman McCarthy

Q: Are they releasing all the prisoner who have been imprisoned because of pot? 

“Groove on! Groove on!” blared from speakers outside a gray warehouse in Santa Ana. Inside, a line of 60 people snaked through the shop, waiting to be helped by a budtender.

Source: For marijuana users, it’s high times as California makes recreational use legal – LA Times

I have friends in real life and on Facebook who ask the question daily “What are you grateful for and what makes you happy today?” 

What I am grateful for and what makes me happy is the profound, usually unexpressed, life-sustaining love between people — family, friends, co-workers, bosses, neighbors and even those we don’t know and haven’t met yet — on whose existence and livelihoods we in part depend every day.

This is my Hallmark Card (Hallmark: … 2. a distinguishing characteristic, trait, or feature — Webster) to my wife hidden neatly away on my blog that she’s bound to discover at some point accidentally or incidentally or some way like that.

from today’s Writer’s Almanac

My friend and I mull over the teas
displayed in square jars
with beveled glass labeled by type.
Each name seems part of a haiku:
“After the Snow Sprouting.” “Moon Palace.”
“Mist Over the Gorges.”
I’m drawn to green teas
with unoxidized leaves that don’t wither,
hold their grassy fragrance
like willow under snow in winter. Continue reading “At the Tea Garden, By Margaret Hasse” →

“Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.” ~ Thomas A. Edison