I am a huge fan of quotes, little snippets containing a few words that inspire and switch a light on. Little things that I had wished I had written.
Here is one I found recently, and instead of trying to talk around it, there is nothing I can add. Let me quote it in full.
Have an amazing New Year, and a happy one at that.
Go well!
Arjuna
Author and journalist Anna Quindlen on living an original life:
“...nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect [in the way people expect] and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
"This is more difficult, because there is no zeitgeist to read, no template to follow, no mask to wear. Set aside what your friends expect, what your parents demand, what your acquaintances require. Set aside the messages this culture sends, through its advertising, its entertainment, its disdain and its disapproval, about how you should behave.
"Set aside the old traditional notion of female as nurturer and male as leader; set aside, too, the new traditional notions of female as superwoman and male as oppressor. Begin with that most terrifying of all things, a clean slate. Then look, every day, at the choices you are making, and when you ask yourself why you are making them, find this answer: for me, for me. Because they are who and what I am, and mean to be.
...
"This will always be your struggle whether you are twenty-one or fifty-one. I know this from experience. When I quit the New York Times to be a full-time mother, the voices of the world said that I was nuts. When I quit it again to be a full-time novelist, they said I was nuts again. But I am not nuts. I am happy. I am successful on my own terms. Because if your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”
Source: 1999 Mount Holyoke Commencement Speech
https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/1999-mount-holyoke-commencement-speech-by-anna-quindlen
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