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C. JoyBell C. Quotes

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“I am not interested in your religious beliefs; I am interested to see the ways you add value to society, to the spaces around you. I don't want to hear about your principles; I want to hear about the ways your neighbourhood is a little better thanks to you. Don't tell me about the values you hold dear in your mind; tell me about how you've added value to the events of life you've found yourself in. Tell me about the people who are thankful for your existence, then tell me why they feel that way.”

“The story of Cinderella is a metaphor for our life experience. Just like Cinderella, some of us will often find ourselves as the only value-giver, surrounded by value-takers. Our goal is to create value, to become sculptors of value; while their goal is to focus on their own value and try to take by all means, to add more to it. When you take value, that's because you're not creating it in the spaces you are in and that surround you. You're not a valuable experience in other people's lives. You're the ugly stepsisters. But unlike Cinderella, we need to be more like Belle. We need to know our own worth while our own worth is happening.”

“If you are free, you're going to scare them. In the same way light scares bats or how a chained animal grown so accustomed to its cage, would refuse an opened fence. That's how you'll scare them: with an open mind, a brave voice, the stare of a bear! You'll scare them every time you belly-laugh and every time you look a man eye-to-eye as an equal. You'll scare them when they see your thighs and when you choose your own religion. You'll scare them. Because it's birds who fly free that terrify the ones in cages.”

“Humans make boxes, put themselves into those boxes, then pull other people in along with them. Everything I do and everything that I am, are the results of climbing out of their boxes and then not allowing myself to be pulled into new ones. Because once you are freed from one, there is always another, and yet another, box that some human will try to pull you into. Especially in the society which I live: a giant box filled with a hundred million tiny boxes, all trying to trap you inside them. And some will tell you that God is in their box with them! Bloody hell of a lie. God cannot be found inside of their cubicles.”

“People can be, like, "you're not really that important for me to stay." And they expect me to say things like, "I can show you how important I am, more than the others", thus expecting this whole dance-of-the-human to ensue. Listen, I don't do dance-of-the-human. I am here in this place where moonlight is the only light and I don't need to be the Sun. The Moon is okay. And some people prefer the Sun, and that's okay too. I have cozy things where I am: quietness and a cat. And big windows and tea. I can let people like other things that are not me. I'm not going to be doing that dance with you. If you want to stay with me, it's going to be because you want to be near me and if you don't want to be near me then that means you want to be near someone or something else. That's okay. I don't have to be everything. I only have to be me.”

“We often talk about being kind, but how do we define "kind" at its very root? Where is the root and what is the root of "kind" and "kindness"? I truly believe that kindness is rooted in the acceptance of the flaws of life, the acceptance of the turns life has taken which we couldn't have planned for and that we didn't hope for. Kindness is rooted in the acceptance of the fact that life is a wild thing that cannot ever be caged. Some people are going to get married and divorced seven times before they find the one they are meant to be with; that's okay. Some people are going to be born with disabilities; that's okay. Some people are born in heaven while others are born in hell; both are okay. Some people are born in hell later ending up in heaven while others are born in heaven later ending up in hell; it's all okay. Life, whether belonging to you or to others, is never going to be a painting fitting into your prepared picture frame. How dare we come into this monstrous, joyous, incredible, terrible world, thinking that we can dictate what's wrong and right, what's better and what's lesser? Come into this world with your wings and your claws and your paws and your laughters! With your feathers and your fur! Because you're going to need all of it! And when you look at other people, sometimes they are going to be donning feathers and other times they are going to be clawing things, jumping in and out, screaming or laughing or crying or being quiet; it's all okay. Because we are ALL living with this monstrous and beautiful creature called Life! So, kindness is the realisation of this, the readiness to see this in others, the willingness to embrace everything that happens-- whether it is happening to yourself or to other people. Kindness is waking up to the true and full nature of life, looking her in the eyes, and being ready to embrace her.”

“Choose your battles wisely. After all, life isn't measured by how many times you stood up to fight. It's not winning battles that makes you happy, but it's how many times you turned away and chose to look into a better direction. Life is too short to spend it on warring. Fight only the most, most, most important ones, let the rest go.”

“A lifetime isn't forever, so take the first chance, don't wait for the second one! Because sometimes, there aren't second chances! And if it turns out to be a mistake? So what! This is life! A whole bunch of mistakes! But if you never get a second chance at something you didn't take a first chance at? That's true failure.”

“Sometimes, you may think you have fallen into an abyss...when in fact, you've just descended to the roots...of the tree of life! Somewhere along your climb, you got lost amongst the branches, and lost in the darkness of the branches, the only way to find the straight way up would be to return to the roots! And from there amongst the roots, you will be able to look straight up and see the top again! And begin your ascent!”

“Dear young woman, do not place your sense of beauty and self worth, upon the plastic pedestal called "what other people say to you", "what other people think about your photo", "how many 'likes' your pictures get", "how many guys tell you that you look sexy", "how skinny can you be?". A plastic pedestal that is but the dismal shadow of the real one. Dear young woman, place your sense of self worth and beauty upon the Roman marble pedestal that will exist even when all other people are no longer there. If you were the very last person on this planet, you should still be able to know within your heart that you are worthy, you are beautiful, you are wanted. Even if you become the very last person on Earth, you should be fully wanted. Want yourself. Know yourself. See yourself as beautiful, see yourself as worthy.”

“There is this narrative, which we follow in our world, that tells us we ought to always be strong. Fortified, immovable, brave. So we tell ourselves that's what we are. Then we believe it. The grave problem with this narrative lies in the fact that in the minutes we stop to breathe and be quiet, in the minutes we stop telling ourselves that, we look into the mirror, or we look at our photographs, and it hits us: we are soft! We are soft, we are bruised, we got hurt far too much than what we deserved! And guess what? It wasn't okay! It really was never okay. And then panic settles in as we realise that all of that time we were abandoning the real us, inside of us, like a small child left in the corner of an alleyway, in favour of embracing the big and brave version of ourselves that we told ourselves to love! So we stopped actually loving the us of the us. The real us. The real you. There is no sadder thing! Please... you are soft and scared... embrace your teddy self, embrace your infant soul, protect what is left of you.”

“Some people walk through a hallway with covered mirrors– the hallway is lined with mirrors but there are blankets covering each of them. They go through life believing in an image of themselves that isn't real, and an image of themselves standing in the world and relative to the world, that isn't real. If you happen to be in that hallway and pull the blankets off the mirrors, they're going to think that you're hurting them; but they're actually just seeing their reflection for the first time. Sometimes the most horrendous thing a person can see, is all the hidden things inside them, the things they've covered, the things they choose not look at. And you're not hurting them, you're setting them free.”

“Never see yourself as someone who will lose love if she loses a man. You are the love. You are the ethereal hand watering your celestial flowers. You are the bliss. There are clouds moving in and out of your lungs; you are the bees and you are the honeycomb and you are this honey in your own jar and then atop your own tongue! There are a trillion reasons why you are the love. The man was never one of them.”

“Many of us want to have relationships because we want a nest, a cozy place of acceptance; that unconditional circumstance. Relationships have become the using of another person as soft stuff to build nests with. Many can do this without even liking the other person, or feeling connected to them, or even wanting to actually be near them. I think the animals are better; an animal would never live with someone they don't like, because they don't have to. They have no religion, no laws, no society. And yet, we see swans and wolves and others: mating for life! For no other reason than that they've found their one-and-only.”

“It's truthfully difficult growing up a woman. When I was a girl, we lived in a small town for the most part and nobody cared to know about anything other than what they already knew. And I was something they didn't know. I really think it was harder for me than the average... girls hate you when you're adorable. Every girl in a small town wants to be the only one worth loving and I've always just had this champagne-bottle personality, unafraid to be soft. But girls took that from me, they really did. They hurt me until I had to toughen up. The best thing about being a woman is that, by now, I've learned how becoming even more like myself is more powerful than any tough exterior I could ever put on. They hate that. It really kills them.”

“When a woman says, "I want to be in love", does this always have to mean, "I want to be in love with a man"? Because I think that we can be "in love" as a state of being. As a state of waking up in the morning. We can be in love because we sink our teeth deeply into the skin and flesh of living. A man is simply another person, a small part of the teeth sinking. Being in love can be an attitude, an outlook, a character trait, one that relies on no one.”

“There is a big problem that arises from keeping the company of those with limited perceptions. At first you'll think you're being kind, or doing people a favour, but the problem you'll eventually face, comes with the realization that we exist to other people not always as we are; but very often, we exist to people as THEY are. So, imagine taking photos with a primitive lens: the primitive lens will capture your view only within its own capacity to do so, and you end up having an image that does not display a true understanding of what it shot. The same thing happens when you allow yourself to be surrounded by primitive mindsets. And you must not do that to yourself; you must not allow all these images of you floating around, none of which do you any justice at all.”

“As I grew up I was raised on the premise that the world was "worldly" and that I should shun all of its "worldliness". But today I am a person so in love with this wild and crawling and growling life! If I could live a thousand different lifetimes, I would. And I would live each one of them with every breath in me. I am in love with the taste of life on this planet. I am unlike what I was raised to be. I carry the world in my heart, always. The rivers and the tigers, the forests and the Michelangelos... all of it.”

“Air is the element most needed by fire. This is why you need open spaces, the wind, and to fly. Because you have fire in you. This is why you look into the sky, why you make wishes, why you tread lightly. You, too, are the air, because inside you there is fire. Why do you think we breathe? Because we are kindling our fires.”

“You'd think that the forest is at the mercy of the flame, but that's not it. The flame's greatest fear is the forest: being out of control, consumed from the inside out, burning with no end in sight. It is the flame which is at the mercy of the forest; but the forest doesn't care, she promises no end, she never says it stops or that it gets better! Flames never asked to be born as flames: so volatile, so vital, so uncontained. You are a flame, this world is a forest. Do you see it now? It was never the other way around.”

“It is difficult for me to have a great amount of respect for those who are so resolute in their ways that their minds cannot be changed. They take pride in their resolve; as if it is more of a virtue to be unchangeable than it is to be human. How is it an accomplishment being unchangeable? You are born with a set of ways, you hardly deviate from it, and how is that admirable? In a world filled with stories, experiences, realities and truths-- why would yours be the only one worth never changing? I take pride in how many times I've changed my mind, my opinions, my ways. Change and growth are the ways of nature, the ways of natural life. Grow past the concrete you were planted in.”

“The way I see myself, is like I'm this Martian flower. A flower on Mars, doing my own thing; this is my own planet, don't get too near me. And maybe an astronaut will come around one day, and say, "Hey, this is a cool planet, that's a cool flower, maybe I can stay here." You know? So far, the astronauts that visit, say, "Hey this is a cool planet and that's a cool flower, I wonder what happens if I pick this flower, bring it home and teach it how to grow in my backyard soil." I'm a Martian flower. I have my own planet, my own soil, I don't need to be anything other. It's a pretty great planet, but you have to have Mars in your heart to stay here. You need to turn Martian. Martian flowers don't grow in your backyard.”

“There are lots of principled people who cannot live from their hearts (because they just don't know how to). They walk around, living their lives, full of their principles. But they don't live from their hearts. People like that are not even alive, they're not even alive. Do not ever make me apologize for my madness. I live from a heart full of madness.”

“The terrible fact about holding onto something tightly, is that, holding on tightly is the opposite of dreaming. When do dreams happen? Dreams happen when we are not trying, when we've had enough, when we hope for something more. "Holding on" is trying, is denial, is not wanting to place hope into any other direction except the one thing that you decided to grasp onto. And so... you forget to dream! You lose the magic of what it means to live! They always tell you to hold onto your dreams, they'll always tell you that. But they'll forget to remind you of how dreams happen. Dreams happen when you're not holding onto anything, when you're lost, when you're in freefall... when you're asleep. Don't forget how to dream, don't forget how the magic of being alive first happens. Stop holding onto things you used to dream of that aren't working anymore. Dream a new dream.”

“A very big problem we have, as a human race, is our repeated failure to identify and to acknowledge all of the parts within us and we collectively and individually spend time and energy on denying so many inner natures, in a hot pursuit of moral codes and annoying virtues, that we have shrunken away within ourselves and left on top merely a malnourished container which feeds on static energy (knee jerk emotions, responses to stimuli, etc.). We are afraid of the creatures that roam the woodlands within us and we are afraid of the abandoned castles, eerie lakes, old songs, forgotten gazebos, all of which are established on the inside of the mind. There is maybe an old chair in a corner of a diner inside of your mind and you push it away and away and further away instead of going back to it, to sit down on it, to have a milkshake at that table. We have forged a worldwide culture wherein we are constantly struggling towards a moral good and it is supposed to be a daily attainment, and yet, nobody ever is good enough at the end of the day. And so we have cut off pieces of ourselves–arms and legs–because everything is nothing, or is wrong, in our bids to be worthy. No wonder we are all so lonely. We have amputated ourselves, and one another, in a bid to run away from the souls which take residence inside of us. Then we blame this loneliness on the world, or on other people's cowardice, or on the stupidity of the human race... we have failed to embrace the monsters within us long enough to give them chances to sprout silky wings and we have failed to embrace the laughs that we wish to free from our chests, if they do not fall into the norms of the standards for our own acceptance. No wonder we are so lonely. We are not lonely because we don't have one another; we are lonely because we do not have our own selves!”

“There are so many "tools for life" that you are going to hear about, every day. But obviously I tell my son what I believe in most of all. I always tell my son, "The wheels that are going to get you through daily life are two things: Humour and Wit. Add a cup of humour and a cup of wit to every hour of your life and these are the wheels that will keep you turning." Humour and Wit. Remember that.”

“When people think you're a "good person", they're essentially putting you inside of this jar with a label on it and the ingredients on that label are whatever the fuck they think "good person" means. Of course it always just basically means "this person was born to make me feel good in any circumstance of my life." And then they pound you into that jar--every inch of you-- and think you've gone spoiled rotten when the time arises that you're no longer making them feel good, for whatever reasons that may be. And that's "good person" from other people's perspectives. Meanwhile, "good person" in first person perspective is basically "hypocrite". It's basically "let me enact these roles I think I am supposed to perform so God and mama Mary and and the neighborhood will believe I am a good person." I am always described as a "good person" and from any perspective that's coming from, I hate hearing that. I hate it. It either means they think they can stuff me in a jar and mix me with their kool aide; or it means I am sticking myself in my own jar and mixing myself with everyone's kool aide. I am a fucking wonderful person-- that is what I am. And that is exactly how to say it: "fucking wonderful"! Not just wonderful. Fucking wonderful. It's not good; it's full of wonderment! It's not bad; it's full of wonderment! So, am I a good person? I have a heart that bleeds with others and a soul that gives people homes. I don't need to be good. I need to be wonderful.”

“Usually our minds are full of things that we are afraid will defile the purity of our actions. We have this impression of our minds being like a river and we feel like it's too polluted, we beat ourselves up over the fear that the mind pollution is going to spill over into our actions. This specific type of fear causes self-consciousness and self-doubt. The root of all this is the unawareness that we are, in reality, living and acting through our hearts and not through our minds. It is not from the mind that our bodies move and not through the mind that our hands choose who to touch, whom to hold onto and what to catch in midair. None of it is the mind. It is all the heart. And the heart cannot ever become polluted, not for a second. The heart can be torn, it can bleed, it can stop sometimes and it can even die. But it can never, it will never ever become polluted. You are your heart: the way you move, the way you love, the way you reach out to touch someone. By the contents of the heart the hands choose which threads to weave and which nails to hammer or to yank asunder. You need not fear. You are pure.”

“Nobody has ever understood where they are at on their path in life, by looking at where other people are at. The only way to understand where you are at, is to look back at where you came from, at your journey, at your struggles, your hindrances and your victorious towers! The only way to not get lost on your map of life is to see the track that you have built and that you have been on up to this day. Nobody has ever come to understand their purpose by looking at the map in someone else's hands.”

“People think that what's important is that the world sees them, understands them, values them. That's not what's important. What's important is that you see yourself, you understand yourself, and that you value yourself. A rainbow would still be a rainbow even if nobody looked up into the sky. Same goes for the stars, the Moon, and Saturn too far away for any of us to see still wears her rings! Be Saturn, be Moon, be stars, be rainbow. See yourself.”

“I am, for certain, a powerful force. I've stood outside on a winter day, for years an unending winter, without batting an eye. While you... even when you go out on a sunny day, you bring a sweater just in case. You can never be on the outskirts, you can never be in the cold, you can never be at the losing end. You need your blankets. You make me think twice about what it means to be a protector; you protected me so well only because I was beside you. It wasn't about me. It was still about you. But I have learned... that even in the winter the summer lasts within me. Flowers grow and sunbeams exit the palms of my hands. And that I can grow feathers and lots of fur.”

“Everybody should know exactly what it is that they are. Really now. If you are beautiful, please know that you are beautiful; if you are strong please know that you are strong; if you are courageous please know that you are courageous; if you are a cunt, please don't fool yourself thinking you're a good person. You are in fact a cunt. If you are a giver, then know you are a giver and learn how to receive. If you are a receiver, identify this, then learn how to give. If you are incredibly stupid; please try to fix that and if you are profoundly intelligent, then please don't hide that. If you are gay, then love being gay and if you're straight then love being straight. Please be who it is that you are, please look into the mirror, please see yourself. Always. Every day. Be whatever it is that you are. Fix what needs to be fixed, throw out what needs to be thrown out; but please, not even for a second, do not ever stop looking at your reflection in the mirror!”

“It's funny. We meet hundreds of people. We stop to remember them sometimes and they're so far away and we're not a part of them anymore. Makes you realise how important it is to be a part of someone. And stay that way with them. And we have visions of going out into the open world and treating it as our oyster... but it takes a small, mindful moment to make us realise that doesn't really mean anything when you don't have someone to call home.”

“Living in happiness means practicing the dance of "detachment-attachment". On a daily basis, we must sense which moments, which events, which people, thoughts and circumstances to detach ourselves from; and which ones to attach ourselves to. Learning this dance, and doing it well, leads to happiness.”