A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
Note: A quote from Jorge Luis Borges.
It’s all material.
Note: Robert Greene on Ryan Holiday.
everything that happens in your life can be turned into something useful, whether it’s your writing, your relationships, or your new startup.
In the mornings when I sit down to journal, one of the notebooks I write in is a gratitude journal. When I first got it, I would fill the pages with all the stuff I liked about the stuff I liked. But after a time, this came to feel sort of pointless and rather repetitive. Now what I do is try to find ways to express gratitude, not for the things that are easy to be grateful for, but for what is hard. * Gratitude for that nagging pain in my leg * Gratitude for that troublesome client * Gratitude for the challenges of the pandemic * Gratitude for that delayed flight * Gratitude for that damage from the storm Because each one was an opportunity. Because I learned from it. Because it reminded me of what was actually important. Because it’s allowed me to see how lucky I am. Because I became a better person for it.
“you may say that deaf men miss the pleasure of hearing a lyre-player’s songs. Yes, but they also miss the squeaking of a saw being sharpened, the noise a pig makes when its throat is being cut, the roaring thunder of the sea which prevents other people from sleeping.”
Note: A quote from Cicero. We don’t miss only the beautiful stuff. We miss the whole, hence we miss the ugly, painful things too.
“Let us accept it,” Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself in his journal, “as we accept what the doctor prescribes. It may not always be pleasant, but we embrace it —because we want to get well.” He could have been talking about the pandemic of his times, the stresses of his job or the children he had buried. He could have been talking of his own ill-health, the bad weather, or the noise of the city’s streets. We don’t know, we just know that whatever it was, he was trying to find a way to say thank you for it, to be grateful for it. “Convince yourself that everything is the gift of the gods,” Marcus said, “that things are good and always will be.”
What is in more desperate need of appreciation and perspective are the things you never asked for, the things you worked hard to prevent from happening in the first place. Because that’s where gratitude will make the biggest difference and where we need the most healing.