#past

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. 'When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "so it goes. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#life #past #death

Holy shit. I've just been having one of the best days in my life. If not the best. I have a feeling of peace inside of me as I write this... I was just talking to a friend of mine about the fact that I find it hard to enjoy good moments sometimes, because of a fear that it may be taken away at any moment. And the truth is it can. This is not just anxiety, it is what's accurate. One of the most important things then is to know that I'm good with everyone I want to be good with, come what may. That the people I love know that I love them. And at this point in my life, I feel that is the case. I have no regrets. From that place, it's easier to enjoy what's going on. I'm not holding onto anything or anyone for dear life... I can't. Life just kinda makes that impossible... The other most important thing is this: acknowledging those moments that are worth noting and remembering, like today. My life is not perfect by any means--there is plenty that I could be fretting about at any given moment... In fact, part of my life is a shit-storm at the moment..! But today I chose not to concentrate on that. I was present, I was here, I was happy. And I would like to add to that: I Am here. And I am happy. Despite everything. ↗

— Janita

#inspirational #life #inspirational

You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep rereading the last one ↗

— Unknown

#living #past #present #life

Patricia embraces me on the station platform. 'The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,' she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. 'Nonsense, Patricia,' I tell her as I climb on board my train. 'The past's what you take with you. ↗

— Kate Atkinson

#past #life

...the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterver form. Both are illusions. ↗

— Eckhart Tolle

#past-and-future #spiritual

Have you heard a single national figure tell you all of the crises of the recent past are not economic, they're cultural? ↗

— Newt Gingrich

#cultural #economic #figure #heard #national

Ah, tell me not that memory sheds gladness o'er the past, what is recalled by faded flowers, save that they did not last? ↗

— Letitia Elizabeth Landon

#did #faded #flowers #gladness #last

A society that has made "nostalgia" a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today. ↗

— Christopher Lasch

#better #commodity #cultural #exchange #important

It's hard to tell how far women's individuality has come in the past twenty years. ↗

— Annie Lennox

#far #hard #how #how far #in the past

Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past? ↗

— John Leonard

#appropriate #creating #future #past #succeeds