To Thelma, From Louise

The sweetest gift, the only gift, we can give ourselves, our communities, the earth ~ is our fullest, truest presence. Simply put, our presence is who we are, or would be, if we weren't always trying to be someone else.

The process IS the goal. If we do what we do because it is politically correct or nice or will someday make us happy, someday will never come, an we will have wasted our lives waiting.

Longing is the soul's way of saying, "I know you thought this was it, but it's not. Don't stop here." Longing is the voice of the universe...desiring to manifest its fullness through us; it is not an expression of the wanting mind gone wild.

We do not have to give up thinness or success or love when we admit these things don't do what we thought they would. Telling the truth makes it possible to fully (and for the first time) enjoy those things because we begin to understand that our lives do not depend on them, which makes us less frightened of losing them.

When I am not hanging on to love or success, I actually have moments of being deliriously happy. So will you.

We can't understand or move through what we refuse to examine. It's not until we admit we are lost that there is even a possibility of discovering a new way.

We already have true nourishment; WE are the nourishment we have been searching for.

We think we know what will make us happy, but we are usually wrong. We think joy comes by acquiring things or relationships or love, but it doesn't. (If it did, we would already be happy.) Joy comes when we remember the qualities from which we cut ourselves off long ago. Value, strength, will, compassion, love. Socrates called them the eternal verities; he said you cannot teach people to have courage or love or strength, but that we know these things by remembering them...

Finally, we are not helping anyone when we pretend to feel less, have less, or be less than we are.

The world will not fall apart
if we let ourselves
express our vastness.
It is more likely the world
will stop falling apart
when we do.


~Geneen Roth
in Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment