LEMON SODA

Breathe in and out — you own your life. Explanations are not required.

I’m trying to get ahead on my 50 Books Challenge (I’ve been bad!) and so I picked up The Bell Jar last week. I finished it in two days but didn’t write about it sooner because that’s how I am — I like to let a good book sink in. After reading this stunning gem I wanted more, so I thought about it and read up on Sylvia Plath and reread some of her poetry.

The way she so eloquently put what her life had been into such beautiful prose, and the way I couldn’t help but identify with so many questions and doubts that inevitably pop up as one grows up and is supposed to make way in the world made this book so easy to get lost in. I think especially now that I’m having my own doubts as to what it is I really want to do, whether I can succeed doing what I love and whether I’m just adequate in general (though hopefully I’m not alone in all that, how scary!)

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked….I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

It was heartbreaking and funny and tragic all at the same time.

What are you currently reading? And for those of you who have read The Bell Jar, what are your thoughts?

No matter where in the world or how old, there are certain decisions that will be pertinent to human life everywhere. You know the type by now: What is my purpose? What is my true passion and should I follow it? What is success? A lifetime of thinking would probably not give you full answers, as part of it involves getting out there and DOING. Unfortunately our head can sometimes get in the way, making us the main obstacle to reach our goals. It seems we find it easy to let self-doubt seep through our thoughts, but when it comes to acknowledging how beautiful or amazing we are, we hold back. Why is that?!

Jonathan Mead’s Reclaim Your Dreams* is “an uncommon guide to living on your own terms”, and it’s definitely helping me put everything into perspective! If you’ve been to Illuminatedmind.net, you may have noticed Jonathan’s unconventional approach to motivation and self help articles — it’s like a little kick in the butt telling you to get it together, and get to whatever it is you want to be doing NOW. Well this gem is nothing short of amazing and I’m only halfway through. I am not rushing through it, but rather savoring each chapter and each exercise.

In the first chapter, Jonathan Brings up a defining issue that may very well be the beginning to this mess we’ve got ourselves into. And that problem lies in the fact that we don’t own our minds; they are always “brooding about something” and tossing thoughts around. Thoughts rich in conflicting messages about who we should be and who we can be (according to societies, fellow human beings and our own selves). Funny enough it has had me thinking all day.

My thoughts are an ‘original’ mix of everything I’ve ever heard, everyone I’ve ever met and everything I’ve ever seen. They didn’t just spring to life in my head, of course. But what about my fears and self-doubt? That’s also got to be a mix of external influences, as well as all that internal brooding. What if I could control that? What if I could choose when to listen to myself? As Jonathan puts it, we walk away or zone out when someone says something we don’t want to hear, so why can’t we do that with our selves? Chapter 1 ends with a neat little exercise to take this first step, and I can’t wait to try it!

So sugardrop, what do you think “owning your mind” means? Do you sometimes pay too much attention to what your mind has to say, even if you don’t like it?

Inspiration comes and goes, and I like to keep a repertoir of resources I can turn to when I’m running low on it! In no particular order, here are 50 inspiring quotes from 25 individuals who have shaped our world (some ages ago, some not so long ago!). Print them and hang them on your wall, let them fill in your subconscious as you work on your next project or bookmark this page for quick reference ;) Whatever you do, have a read through these and please share your own favorite quotes!

1. Albert Einstein
   • Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
   • Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
2. Lao Tzu
   • Great acts are made up of small deeds.
   • He who does not trust enough, will not be trusted.
3. Martin Luther King Jr.
   • We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
   • Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
4. Helen Keller
   • It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
   • I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
5. Wayne Dyer
   • How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.
   • If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
6. Mahatma Gandhi
   • An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.
   • I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God’s creation, woman, the object of our lust.
7. Leonardo da Vinci
   • Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation… even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
   • It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
8. Virginia Woolf
   • I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
   • If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
9. Jane Goodall
   • I do not want to discuss evolution in such depth, however, only touch on it from my own perspective: from the moment when I stood on the Serengeti plains holding the fossilized bones of ancient creatures in my hands to the moment when, staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back. You may not believe in evolution, and that is all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.
   • The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.
10. Pope John Paul II
    • An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.
    • Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.
11. Nelson Mandela
    • There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
    • There is nothing like returning to a place that reminds unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
12. Billie Holiday
    • If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.
    • Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.
13. Confucius
    • Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
    • It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
14. Kofi Annan
    • We have to choose between a global market driven only by calculations of short-term profit, and one which has a human face.
    • We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems, if only we can find the political will.
15. Gautama Buddha
    • Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.
    • You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.
16. Sappho
    • Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow.
    • When anger spreads through the breath, guard thy tongue from barking idly.
17. John Locke
    • What worries you, masters you.
    • There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.
18. Rosa Parks
    • I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move.
    • The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
19. Tenzin Gyasto (Dalai Lama)
    • If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.
    • Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.
20. Galileo Galilei
    • The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do.
    • In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
21. John Lennon
    • If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.
    • If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.
22. Maya Angelou
    • If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
    • Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
23. Thomas Jefferson
    • Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
    • Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
24. Ludwig Van Beethoven
    • What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.
    • Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.
25. Socrates
    • Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
    • One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.

Do it for yourself! Happy weekend everyone :)