always speak your truth even if it's against your self

"Taking responsibility means recognizing that you’re the one who can now begin to recognize those patterns (which until now have remained hidden and automatic) and start to do the work to change them – which is really just the work of honouring and (literally) embodying your own, true, authentic self. Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to bring us back to ourselves, to what’s really important. For some people that takes the form of a loved one dying or a horrible accident. I know this may be hard to accept right now, but you might want to consider the view that your disease has actually come along to bring you back to yourself. The great spiritual teacher A.H. Almaas talks about 'a part of you that loves you so much that it will make you suffer greatly, to teach you – because what else can it do? That’s its job.' "

~Dr. Gabor Mate

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then. I am large, I contain multitudes." -Walt Whitman

"future shock "

Granted, I write a blog on a social network, but the intellectual property problem of social networking is that social networking has turned emotions/likes/life stories/personal narrative into the ultimate fetish commodity. Soon, with the help of bit coins, silk roads, onion-ed security footprints and fingerprint i.d. shopping, we will be able to attach a value-based number to this isolated emotional currency; there will be links to bank accounts with incremental percentage points of monetary value paid out for every like/feeling/narrative/personal story/photo/and inadvertent advertisement via trends on social networks.

support the ones you love

"Because she knew he wouldn't mention this afterward; she knew he wouldn't take it as a sign that she was losing her nerve or was in too deep. There weren't many people in this world who would let you be vulnerable and still believe you were strong."

Veronica Mars, “The Thousand Dollar Tan Line,” an original mystery by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham, pg. 188

bound by blood, not bloodlines

from Web MD:

"The original meaning of the saying “blood is thicker than water” is that family ties are the tightest of all.

• YOUR ANSWER: True

• CORRECT ANSWER: False

Actually, it’s quite the opposite. In Middle Eastern culture, blood brothers -- warriors who share blood they shed in battle -- are even closer than biological brothers. An earlier expression is that blood is “far stronger than the water of the womb.” Historians think wealthy Englishmen may have bent the meaning to stress the importance of bloodlines and keep money in the family."