So I was sitting there in the bar and this guy comes up to me and he said "My life stinks" and I saw his gold credit card and I saw the way he was looking at people across the room and I looked at his face and you know, what a good looking face, and I just said,







"Dude, your perspective on life sucks".



He's got looks that books take pages to tell
He's got a face to make you fall on your knees
He's got money in the bank to thank and I guess
You could think he's livin' at ease

Like lovers on the open shore -- What's the matter?
When you're sitting there with so much more --What's the matter?
While you're wondering what the hell to be
Are you wishing you were ugly like me?

weathering storms with optimism. . .


“There are cycles of good and bad times, ups and downs, periods of joy and sadness, and times of plenty as well as scarcity. When our lives turn in an unanticipated and undesirable direction, sometimes we experience stress and anxiety. One of the challenges of this mortal experience is to not allow the stresses and strains of life to get the better of us—to endure the varied seasons of life while remaining positive, even optimistic. Perhaps when difficulties and challenges strike, we should have these hopeful words of Robert Browning etched in our minds: 'The best is yet to be'



("Rabbi Ben Ezra," in Charles W. Eliot, ed., The Harvard Classics, 50 vols. [1909–10], 42:1103).”



L. Tom Perry

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life. Well, small, but valuable. And sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.

- Kathleen Kelly

Fear

I thought about. . . how we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner we love, but we don't say anything because we're frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.

-Mitch Albom
'Tuesdays With Morrie'

“Our challenges, including those we create by our own decisions, are part of our test in mortality. Let me assure you that your situation is not beyond the reach of our Savior. Through Him, every struggle can be for our experience and our good (see D&C 122:7). Each temptation we overcome is to strengthen us, not destroy us. The Lord will never allow us to suffer beyond what we can endure (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). “We must remember that the adversary knows us extremely well. He knows where, when, and how to tempt us. If we are obedient to the promptings of the Holy Ghost, we can learn to recognize the adversary’s enticements. Before we yield to temptation, we must learn to say with unflinching resolve, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’ (Matthew 16:23).”

Robert D. Hales

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.


Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

- Langston Hughes

Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable

And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table

No one can find the rewind button, girl.

So cradle your head in your hands

And breathe... just breathe,

Oh breathe, just breathe

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

emily dickinson

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.
William Wallace

my life has become a boring pop song,
and everyone, sing along.

Our youth is fleeting,
Old age is just around the bend.




I can't wait to go gray.