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You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time that you were given. You were invited, and you showed up, and you simply cannot do more than that. They
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Currents of humid wind swept down the mountainside. The air across the beach snapped and shimmied, like a bedsheet shaken out - as though the beach itself were shaking off the violence that had just been visited upon it. Then a humid calm would prevail, for a few hours or a few days, until another storm rolled in.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Desire is the design flaw.") The"
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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When I don't know what I'm doing, I look like I don't know what I'm doing. When I'm excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently, I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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But why must everything have a practical application? I'd been such a diligent soldier for years--working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums, and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to only be about duty?
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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The Bhagavad Gita--the ancient Indian yogic text--says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. So I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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It's not fair for you to come here," I tell Depression. "I paid you off already. I served my time back in New York." But he just gives me that dark smile, settles into my favorite chair, puts his feet on my table and lights a cigar, filling the place with his awful smoke. Loneliness watches and sighs, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He's going to make me sleep with him again tonight, ..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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ones who will be making any decisions along the way. I recognize and respect that you are part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still--your suggestions will never be followed. You're allowed to have a seat, and you're allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You're not allowed to touch the road maps; you're not allowed to suggest detours; you're not allowed to fiddle with the t..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Sincere spiritual investigation is, and always has been, an endeavor of methodical discipline. Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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They come upon me all silent and menacing like Pinkerton Detectives, and they flank me--Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment,
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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The brain scans and mood swings of an infatuated lover, scientists have recently discovered, look remarkably similar to the brain scans and mood swings of a cocaine addict-- and not surprisingly, as it turns out, because infatuation is an addiction, with measurable chemical effects on the brain. As the anthropologist and infatuation expert Dr. Helen Fisher has explained, infatuated lovers, just like any junkie, "will go to unhealthy, humili..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Fake it till you make it
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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And experience had already instructed Henry that learning things gave a person advantage over other people
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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He had learned in the past four years to speak only when he knew that which he was speaking about. Moreover, he had learned that silence can sometimes relax a listener into thinking that one might be intelligent.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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That s what her mother said 'Stop your weeping and carry on
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Your worth as a hostess consists in displaying the talents of your guests, not crowing about your own.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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You are an idealist, which means that you are destined to be disappointed, and perhaps even wounded. You seek a gospel of benevolence and miracle, which leaves no room for the sorrows of existence. You are like William Paley, arguing that the perfection of every design in the universe is proof of God's love for us.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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From the center of my life, there came a great fountain...
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Virginia Woolf wrote, "Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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but she was old, and old women do tend to get pushed aside at big gatherings--even when they have footed the bill for that gathering.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that's not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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We have shriveled down the notion of what constitutes "a family unit" to such a tiny scale that it would probably be unrecognizable as a family to anybody in one of those big, loose, enveloping Hmong clans. You almost need an electron microscope to study the modern Western family these days. What you've got are two, possibly three, or maybe sometimes four people rattling around together in a giant space, each person with her own private phy..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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upped
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Later in life he reported that he had found his fame boring--not because it was immoral or corrupting, but simply because it was exactly the same thing every day. He was looking for something richer, more textured, more varied. So he dropped out.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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somewhat
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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everyone
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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He told them that they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of this world.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Y si despues de pasar por una epoca tan tenebrosa ves que queda un atisbo de felicidad en tu interior, no te queda mas remedio que agarrar esa felicidad aunque acabes con la cara entera manchada de barro.
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life-experience
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Our whole business therefore in this life," wrote Saint Augustine, rather Yogically, "is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Groceries, baby, listen to your friend Richard. You go set your lily-white ass down in that meditation cave every day for the next three months and I promise you this--you're gonna start seeing some stuff that's so damn beautiful it'll make you wanna throw rocks at the Taj Mahal.
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inspirational
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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My husband was sleeping in the other room, in our bed.I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn't wake him to share in my distress--what would be the point? He'd already been watching me fall apart for months now, watching me behave like a madwoman (we both agreed on that word), and I only exhausted him. We both knew there was something wrong with me, and he'd been losing patience with it. We'd been fighting and crying, and ..
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marriage
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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The hunt to uncover those jewels--that's creative living.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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One must bear what cannot be escaped
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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And while the paths and outcomes of creative living will vary wildly from person to person, I can guarantee you this: A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner--continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you--is a fine art, in and of itself. Because creative living is where Big Magic will always..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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White Acre was not, in fact, a very large place.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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The emergency that always gets you in the end is the one you didn't prepare for.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Maybe because they didn't worry too much about me, I didn't worry too much about me, either.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Bravery means doing something scary.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us--albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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If you dare to create something and put it out there, after all, then it may accidentally stir up a response. That's the natural order of life: the eternal inhale and exhale of action and reaction. But you are definitely not in charge of the reaction--even when that reaction is flat-out bizarre.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |