“You have but one life. You could spend it taking stock of what others have and resenting it, or you could spend it taking stock of what you have and doing something with it.”
Source: The Talk: A Young Person's Guide to Life's Big Questions
“Categorizing yourself by either your victimization or your privilege fails to give any clarity to life’s fundamental question: What are you going to do with it?”
Source: The Talk: A Young Person's Guide to Life's Big Questions
“Wallowing in victimhood only demeans and paralyzes you. Don’t do it. Redeem it instead. Transcend it instead.”
Source: The Talk: A Young Person's Guide to Life's Big Questions
“A woman in labor never asks, “Why me?” because she knows both the cause of her suffering and its effect, and that sense of reason and purpose gives her the capacity to endure it.”
Source: The Talk: A Young Person's Guide to Life's Big Questions
“Once you know who you are, you need not fear being misunderstood, or isolated, or bullied. You won’t care whether others respect you, because you know who you are.”
Source: The Talk: A Young Person's Guide to Life's Big Questions
“For though despair is often close at hand, it never triumphs, and through all the story runs, a sustaining bond, the primal force which humanity shares with all earthly creatures, the sheer will to live.”
Source: Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party
“The densest despair takes
Us to no ordinary joy.
Sometimes diving
Into the deep inside us
Is the only way
We rise above it.”
Source: Call Us What We Carry: Poems
“I felt a looming sense of despair, as I had the last time, I’d gotten a DUI. It was a repeat of what had happened before, except this time I didn’t flip them off, cuss them out, and pee on the floor. I was too deflated to quarrel. As I sat there, I realized that this time I wasn’t disappointed or angry with them, but with myself. To my surprise, I found myself telling them that I was sorry and that I wished none of this had ever happened.”
Source: Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
“I've believed that before. Somehow, I can't... I can't keep clinging to fringes of hope.”
Source: Defenders of the Black Crown
“How do we not fall into a perpetual state of despair? My father said to me the other day, "We have to stare it down. IT being grief." IT being everything he can't control like age, the waning strength of his legs, or the loss of another son.”