“If you are chronically down, it is a lifelong fight to keep from sinking.” - Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
I think that @rinnika already answered what Shakespeare meant by that perfectly. "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." The way this sentence is structured is poetic and it is also seen in greek very often, so it doesn't seem so alien to me. In a more common word arrangement: "Love (true love, deep love, THE love, "hard" love maybe?) is not love which alters (superficial love, temporary love, infatuation, "easy" love) when it finds alteration (Well, people tend to go through phases. Some are good phases that bring the best out of them, while others can be worst that bring the worst out of them, just like the situations around them change)." If let's say two people go through thick and thin together and still, there's no doubt in their mind that they want to stay together, because they are sure that the other person is worth it, be it friends, be it lovers, then their love has already been tested and verified "true". Love remains above all the shit they might come across in their relationship... even if they split. 'True" love doesn't mean it always goes both ways. And that's what I was thinking when I wrote: "As I see it, at some point it might be an option, but once this option is conceived it ceases being a choice." I wrote that because I find it relevant to this verse. What I mean by that... Hm... Well, at least I, sometimes monitor my emotions, reactions, feelings towards a person. Something like self-reflection (not sure though). In some situations, even when things might have gotten completely out of control and I got overwhelmingly hurt and I ended up hating the other person (yes, been there once) I realised that even in these fucked up situations, where take-backs are not an option anymore, apart from the hate, still, love bloody lingers. You somewhat get split in half. You simply can't stop caring for the other person although you can't accept them in your life. Even when your emotional wishes can never be granted, you think about the "hated" person and although you are spiteful in your thoughts, you still know that if something bad ever happened to them you'd collapse. You want them to suffer and not to suffer simultaneously and then... you end up in therapy. As Khalil Gibran said: "To love a person is very hard. It might become hell itself, because it might become heaven just as much." Generally, I agree with him in most of his love "teachings". That's all!
Feeding off your quote Zerotonin...and based on actual experiences... "Sometimes things have to fall apart, so that we can choose again, and put ourselves back together the way we want, and are meant to be." - Jeff Anderson "Sometimes a breakdown can be the beginning of a kind of breakthrough, a way of living in advance through a trauma that prepares you for a future of radical transformation." - Cherrie Moraga "Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain way. Looked at in another way, the right course of action may be so obvious that the problem no longer exists." - Edward de Bono "The huge difference between a 'sinking' feeling, and a 'sink in' feeling is accomplished by a slight change of attitude." - Xander17 "Sometimes the only way up or out is to sink to the very depths; for only then do you have something solid to push yourself up from. What you're looking for is often found in that which you're fearfully trying to avoid." - Xander17
"This may shock you, but I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position. Attitude is that "single string" that keeps me going or cripples my progress. It alone fuels my fire or assaults my hope. When my attitudes are right, there's no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, no challenge too great for me." - Charles R. Swindoll "Courage is daring to take a first step, a big leap, or a different path. It's believing that things will ultimately get better even as they get worse. Courage is being responsible for your own actions, and admitting your own mistakes without placing blame on others. It's relying not on others for your success, but on your own skills and efforts. It's taking a dream and doing anything, risking everything, and stopping at nothing to make it a reality." - Caroline Kent "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome." - Booker T. Washington "The superior man makes the difficulty to be overcome his first interest, success only comes later." - Confucius "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." - Hellen Keller "Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes." - John Dewey
"Sometimes you have to forget your principles and just do the right thing." -- attributed to folksinger Dave Van Ronk, but he might have stolen it from somebody else. That's called the "folk process." To illustrate: "Hell, he stole that from me, but I steal from everybody." --Woody Guthrie
"The last motive in the world for acquiring vocabulary should be to impress. Words should be acquired because we urgently need them to convey, to reach, to express something within us, and to understand others." - Vanna Bonta "Don't make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life." - Miguel Angel Ruiz "Dare to be yourself." - Andre Gide
"Be more concerned about your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are." - John Wooden "I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." - Booker T. Washington "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission." - Eleanor Roosevelt "We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us." - Francois de la Rochefoucauld "Never try to impress people with the profundity of your thought by the obscurity of your language. Whatever has been thoroughly thought through can be stated simply." - Unknown "The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right." - Hannah Whitall Smith "It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously." - Logan Pearsall Smith "Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults." - Socrates
“Don’t repeat yourself. It’s not only repetitive, it’s redundant, and people have heard it before.” - Lemony Snicket
"In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate." - Rene Descartes "Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do." - Johann von Goethe "A new, spiritually based social activism is beginning to assert itself. It stems not from hating what is wrong and trying to fight it, but from loving what could be and making the commitment to bring it forth." - Marianne Williamson "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." - Confucius "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust
"Stay away! Sick people scare me!" -- A colleague of mine this morning. Still not sure if it was in jest.... Mind you, my irritiability may have made the situation worse.... At least it isn't contagious anymore.
"Angering a woman then telling her to go to the kitchen is a dumb thing to do, it has more weapons than any other room in the house and she knows how to use them!" Me a decade ago
"Honey, go in the kitchen, get the biggest knife, and bring it back here, so you can embed it in my skull, please?"
Clicked 'like' while the sudden burst of cold rain and wind shakes me Ute. Just finished my first hot coffee. Now the rain has stopped, the clouds have opened and the warm early spring sun is out. Gotta love Tassie weather. Always be prepared for 4 seasons on any day of the year.
"If we believe in the rebirth of our civilization, then clearly this renaissance must begin in the chambers of our own hearts. We cannot wait for society to change, or for our institutions to be renewed. We, as individuals, must assume responsibility for our own personal transformation." - Georg Feuerstein "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." - Anne Frank "Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton "Conscious evolution begins as we take responsibility for clearing our own obstructions." - Dan Millman "By attempting to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we are giving away our power to some other individual or organization. In this way, millions daily attempt to escape from freedom." - M. Scott Peck "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw "The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs." - Joan Didion "You are powerful beyond anything you've ever imagined, but then you have to recognise responsibility. You are personally responsible for everything in your life, once you become aware that you are personally responsible for everything in your life." - Dr. Bruce Lipton "You have the power to control your own destiny. You may not feel at all comfortable with that, or want to own up to the responsibility it implies, yet it is true nonetheless. You may complain that there are so many powerful and overwhelming outside forces acting upon you that nothing you do will matter. Yet everything you do matters to the highest degree in creating your own destiny. For your destiny is not about what comes to you. It is about who you choose to become. Your destiny is not really about what happens to you. It is built and fulfilled by the things that you cause to happen, by what you do with the precious life you have. It happens in every moment, with every choice, with every thought and every action. Always, you are creating your own unique destiny." - Ralph Marston
Similar to Irish weather. Spoiler The trick is to have everything in your car or bag for weather that could happen. I carry my fleece hat and my sunglasses in my pockets. Gonna go and add my gloves now, cos it's getting that cold here already.
Same. Spoiler Got caught out when I first arrived, as I spent most of my life on the mainland in Queensland. Very rare to have abrupt weather changes in SE QLD. Just did some research. Landmass: both small. Ireland 1\5th larger than Tassie; but you have a few million inhabitants, we have 0.5 million. I don't miss the crowded noisy city and burbs. And regarding landmass, it seems it's the small size and surrounded by ocean are the reasons for the erratic weather.
"No situation can be difficult of itself; it is the lack of insight into its intricacies, and the want of wisdom in dealing with it, which give rise to the difficulty. Immeasurable, therefore, is the gain of a difficulty transcended." - James Allen "People are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound." - James Allen "Let them that would move the world move themselves first." - Socrates "Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton "Our soul work...is to repair ourselves, to heal into wholeness. It is, simply put, to identify and remove whatever gets in the way of being truly who we are. It is the task of uncovering our authentic self from the encrustations that overlay it, concealing it from us." - M.J. Abadie
