"I’m not telling you to make the world better, because
I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just
telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not
just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the
picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take
pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do
that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I
think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the
tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to
do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
Joan Didion
“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out
for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its
most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery
smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk
during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no
other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality
time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and
give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude.
That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world.
But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”
Albert Camus
