Category: Persons
Happiness is overrated
[It] is a function of our expectations — or, as it has been said: “Happiness equals reality minus expectations.”
Given that neat formulation, there are two ways to attack the problem: boost our reality or lower our expectations.
Most of us choose the former. We’d rather stew in our misery than trim our expectations.
Lowering our sights smacks us as a cop out, un-American. Better a nation of morose overachievers, we reason, than a land of happy slackers. (via Lowered Expectations)
Parting words to graduating students
my advice to you is simple:
find out what you are meant to do and do it,
and find out who you really are, under all the junk that has been attached to you by those who would make you everybody else, and be that.
(…)
what you are meant to do and who you really are are not the same thing:
what you’re meant to do is learned, discovered,
but who you really are has always been there — it is a matter of unlearning who you have been told to be, or told you are, or should be,
until all that is left is the knowledge of who you are and always were: nobody but yourself.
Our deepest fear
This topic, and the movie, came up in a conversation earlier this week.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine as children do.
It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Taken from the movie Coach Carter, it is an edited version of a poem by Marianne Williamson.
The girl effect
A presentation with written words only. Self-standing and brilliant.
Watch it… and do something!
thanks Rowan.
UNICEF
(thanks Rowan)
Building a windmill from spare parts and scrap
When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called “Using Energy” and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.
Meet William from Malawi.
Confessing 20 years after the fact
A man who said his tormented conscience led him to confess to an
unsolved 1987 slaying faces up to 20 years in prison now with a jury’s
conviction of murder. (CNN.com)
We can try and forget them or pretend that they never happened, but our actions and decisions leave an imprint on who we are. Every thought, decision or action has at least an intransitive feature.