Rob Tourtelot
@rtourtelot
Rob Tourtelot
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. My number one criteria in evaluating a piece of writing is not whether it solved my problems, but whether it opened me up to dive deeper into the mystery.
Luke Burgis • Why I Write
I think “And what else?” is the best coaching question in the world. It does two things: It extends the period of curiosity, and it tames your advice monster.
A monk once went to see the Abbot of the temple and told him "I am very discouraged. What should I do?" The Abbot replied, "encourage others."
Seiryu • On losing motivation.. - Treeleaf Zendo
We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any per... See more
Tara Brach • Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of R.A.I.N.
a good story, by definition, has to be smarter than the person who wrote it. Because if it’s less smart, that means the writer wasn’t writing a story but assembling a piece of Ikea furniture. Most of the masterpieces I’ve encountered were smarter than their creators, and often more decent and purely good than them, too.
Etgar Keret • So you think you can tell?
From Joan Didion, delightfully tart, in response to being asked by an interviewer about using the good silverware every day: “Well, every day is all there is.”
Sarah Thankam Mathews • every day is all there is
I started to meditate in a different way. I let go of the idea of what meditation was supposed to be. So I would sit down and let my experience simply be, in a very deep way. I started to let go of trying to control my experience. That became the beginning of discovering for myself what True Meditation is. From that point on, that shift - moving fr... See more
In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.” -Jack Kornfield
I’m at my most courageous on the page because interrogating my feelings with words feels justified and purposeful in the case that it helps someone else understand the mess of the human condition.