#wake

If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective. We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe. Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day—the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening? It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we’re miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn’t seasoned just the way we like. When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we’re up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first. In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter. ↗

— Mark Nepo

#enlightenment #happiness #joy #mark-nepo #misery

I wake up every morning and I wish I were dead, and so does Jim. ↗

— Tammy Faye Bakker

#does #every #i #i wish #jim

In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, our nation has been put under considerable fiscal pressure. ↗

— Paul Gillmor

#considerable #fiscal #hurricanes #hurricanes katrina #katrina

I sleep seven hours. If I go to bed at two, I wake up at nine. If I go to bed at midnight, I wake up at seven. I don't wake up before - the house can fall apart, but I sleep for seven hours. ↗

— Karl Lagerfeld

#bed #before #fall #go #hours

No, and I never, ever eat in between the meals. I control it well enough and with no pills, and I sleep seven hours a night. I go to bed. I fall asleep, and I wake up seven hours later, and this is the most important. ↗

— Karl Lagerfeld

#bed #between #control #eat #enough

I usually doze off between 7:30 and 9 p.m. while putting my baby to sleep. Then I suddenly wake up remembering I'm an adult with no bedtime. I spend the next four hours catching up on reading, e-mails, and other adult pursuits until I collapse for good until sunrise. ↗

— Padma Lakshmi

#baby #bedtime #between #catching #collapse

I would say practical progressive, which means that the Republican party or any political party has got to recognize the problems of a growing and complex industrial civilization. And I don't think the Republican party is really wide awake to that. ↗

— Alf Landon

#awake #civilization #complex #got #growing

At the dawn of the 19th century, the country was awakening to its enormous scope and variety. ↗

— David Lavender

#awakening #century #country #dawn #enormous

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. ↗

— T. E. Lawrence

#act #dangerous #day #dream #dreamers

I think sometimes I'm more fond of doing the research for the character because you learn so much. Sometimes shooting is really difficult because you wake up early and you're always hurrying. And sometimes I don't know what I'm doing. I'm here and there. ↗

— Bai Ling

#because #character #difficult #doing #early