Life Quotes ~ week one

Life Quotes...and what they mean to me.

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love this quote because it reminds me of the natural cycles of life: winter giving way to spring, spring giving way to summer, and summer giving way to fall.  In order to move onto the next challenge, obstacle, lesson --opportunity -- in our lives, we have to be willing to move away from the past. If we want a new pair of shoes, at some point, we have to take off the ones we're wearing.

As human beings, we are naturally nostalgic about where we've been; thus, why we immortalize precious moments with photographs, glorify historical figures, sometimes to the point of leaving out their not-so-good aspects (yes, he was a great leader but he also neglected his children and cheated on his wife), and continue to tell bigger-than-life stories about back in the day.... 

This is as it should be: unless and until we get stuck in the past at the cost of the present.  Or future.  Unless we believe our best days are behind us.  Until we yearn for where we've been more than we dream of where we're going.

To that end, children seem to strike a perfect balance.  They live in the moment; feel the full extent of every emotion; play as hard as they can play; yet dream of the next birthday (they'll be older and taller!), count the days until the next holiday (they'll throw a grand party!), and imagine the next grade in school (they'll walk the halls with the big kids!). To choose for one thing is, by default, to choose against another, and to move toward a new thing is often to move away from something else.  But that is precisely how life is meant to be: There are so many flavors to taste, places to visit, people to meet.  Sure, there will be those things that become staples, those things we embrace throughout our entire lives, but when the time comes to gain a new perspective, to make a new friend, to walk away from something past...to embark upon a new beginning, we can only hope to do so with the grace and wonder of children.  To accept the profound truth spoken by Ralph Waldo Emerson...and then to proceed...

Boldly.  Without regret.  Dreaming of the infinite possibilities.

{All quotes taken from thinkexist.com}