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Quote by Susie Clevenger

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Dirt Road Dreams

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Susie Clevenger

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“Pregnancy had seemed a reasonable excuse for letting her metal-smithing tools languish, but that accounted for only eighteen months of the last twenty-six years. Motherhood wasn't the real problem, though it took him a long time to figure out what was. She needed resistance, the very quality that metal most demonstrably offered up. Suddenly Glynis had no difficulty to overcome, no hard artisan's life with galleries filching half the too-small price of a mokume brooch that had taken three weeks to forge. No, her husband made a good living, and if she slept late and dawdled the afternoon away reading Lustre, American Craft Magazine and Lapidary Journal, the phone bill would still get paid. For that matter, she needed need itself. She could overcome her anguish about embarking on an object that, once completed, might not meet her exacting standards only if she had no choice. In this sense, his helping had hurt her. By providing the financial cushion that should have facilitated making all the metal whathaveyou she liked, he had ruined her life. Wrapped in a slackening bow, ease was a poisonous present.”

NeedArtistsPerfectionism
Book:So Much for That
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“Life is cruel. It plays with you while you spend your time thinking you're the one playing it. You plan, overthink, try to prepare for every possible worst-case scenario, but life still finds a way to hit you from where you least expect. You give everything your time, your love, your soul to people. You make homes out of your friends, your family, your partner. But in the end, you’re just alone. People can walk away. And when they do, you’re left wondering, should we even love at all? Should we just be selfish, chase our own happiness, run before we get hurt? Or should we stay, give everything we have, even when we know it could break us? No one tells you what’s right. You can be the wisest person in the room, a genius even, and still life will humble you through pain. It doesn’t matter how much you know, pain teaches in a language no book ever could. So who do we trust? Who do we love? People say love yourself, don’t rely on anyone. But what’s the point of loving yourself if there’s no one to share that love with? What’s the point if you can’t open your heart, take risks, live fully without holding back? Then you hear others say, always prioritize yourself, set boundaries, don’t be weak. And yet some say be kind, help others, see their pain, love them anyway. But that path hurts too. So what’s right, selfishness or selflessness? Maybe the answer is to be selfless without expecting anything in return. But that’s easier said than done. We’re human, we expect. We break when what we give isn’t returned. So how do you reach that place where you expect nothing? How many times do you have to die inside before you stop expecting? How much pain does it take? No one teaches us these things. Life does. And it teaches through pain. So maybe pain isn’t the enemy, it’s our ally. It’s the one thing that leaves a mark deep enough to make us remember. Still, we run from it. We spend our lives chasing happiness, but maybe happiness is the real illusion, because it’s fleeting, it gives false hope, and disappears when you need it most. Maybe pain is the only thing that stays. Perhaps it’s the only thing that’s honest.”

PainLife Lessons
Author:Wahi Noor
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“I did not grasp all these details - and many more - right away. They came to my notice with time and as a result of necessity. I would be in the direst of dire straits, facing a bleak future, when some small thing, some detail, would transform itself and appear in my mind in a new light. It would no longer be the small thing it was before, but the most important thing in the world, the thing that would save my life. This happened time and again. How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.”

NeedNecessity
Author:Yann Martel
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