'Now Is The Time to Open Your Heart' - Alice Walker (edited 8/27)

I am currently reading this book by Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple) and there is a quote in it that I would like to add to this page. The reason I want to add this is because it gives me a different insight to what I have long thought of as a nasty, bad habit - smoking. I feel it is so true and it makes me think about the people I love that smoke. It reads:

The habit of smoking (terrible, dumber than stupid, he knew) had taught him about emptiness, the need to fill internal space, the huge internal space existing within all of us, with Something.

I have to go for now, but will add more to this post later. Just wanted to give you something to think about.


I just came across this line and I love it:

Ya es el tiempo para abrir tu corazon. Now is the time to open your heart. This was the line that she always understood, no matter how distracted or apprehensive she was at the beginning of the journey. It never failed to make her feel the rightness of her decision to be where she was.

This line touches me right down to the very core. I am someone who has always looked for the approval of others before I make decisions. Living like that can be very stressful because I felt like I walked on eggshells to say the right thing to the person I was talking to at the time. Feeling out their body language and tone of voice and choosing my words carefully. I have learned in the last few months that I am able to be happy without someone giving me the go ahead to do so. I've learned that I have my own (very strong) wants and needs and opinions. I have learned that I am capable of being responsible for myself and my family. While Tom's time as a travel nurse has given us many opportunities to see places we would probably have never seen, it has also proven to me that our relationship and bond is strong and that unless two people in love and marriage learn to rely on each other for support, they will never make it. Stepping out of our life to go on this "journey" has taught me that I am no longer the codependent pleaser I once was that was scared to make decisions for fear of upsetting someone else. It was no one's fault but my own, but I am stronger now than I have ever been and you know what? I am truly happy.


OK - here's another one...

When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. You would not drive a car looking out the side window, would you? Yet that is what it has come to for many human beings; they are driving their lives forward while watching what is happening along the road or even in the rearview mirror.