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Trillion

Tonight most people will be welcomed home by jumping dogs and squealing kids. Their spouses will ask about their day and tonight they will sleep. The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places; and one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be my wing tip passing over.

A boy is given a horse on his 14th birthday. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how wonderful.” But a Zen master who lives in the village says, “We shall see.”

The boy falls off the horse and breaks his foot. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how awful.” The Zen master says, “We shall see.”

The village is thrown into war and all the young men have to go to war. But, because of the broken foot, the boy stays behind. Everyone says, “Oh, how wonderful.”

The Zen master says, “We shall see.”

We all ultimately hang by a thread.

In your light, I learn how to love
In your beauty, how to make poems

You dance inside my chest,
Where no one sees you

Sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art

Rumi

Observation

As much as you will hate it - life will put you in a situation (it will, I guarantee that) from which there will be no way out. You will have no idea, whether or not you will make it out of the situation. And if you do, will you still be alive or just a ghost of who you were?

And in that darkness is where the fun lies - of knowing that you will make it. That you will be successful, that you will get what you want and that you are the master of your own destiny. You probably won’t know how, why or when. You will only know this, that there is a higher force looking out for you and if you trust it, you will make it, not just alive; but alive, glorious and kicking ass.

What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better

Wendell Phillips

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

(via lessthanperfect)

Life planning is like making a 5 year DCF model. One knows reality will/could be way different, but the decision driver is still that flawed model

An eternity to create, a moment to destroy

Young man, in mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them

John von Neumann

This applies to much more than mathematics.

Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.

Anthony Robbins

The headline you won’t be reading today: “Millions saved in Japan by good engineering and government building codes”. But it’s the truth.

Dave Ewing (via kateoplis)

(via themonicabird)

Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.

Robert DeNiro (via kblitz)

When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.