E.K.

#makeitcount

So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness.

—Dalai Lama

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

—

Eleanor Roosevelt

Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to. But other things are harder. Try it: “I’m not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it’s not a priority.” “I don’t go to the doctor because my health is not a priority.” If these phrases don’t sit well, that’s the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently.

—Are You As Busy As You Think? - WSJ.com (via inkless-pen)

(via inkless-pen)

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

—MLK Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

Occasionally somebody will come up to me and say, “Oh, you’re such a wonderful crusader” and I’ll flinch. I’m wary of the idea of being an activist or a crusader. I’m an advocate as a columnist but there is a faint, almost wandering line between advocacy and activism. One of the perils of activism is that you become so much a part of a cause that you lose your objectivity. There can be a tendency to start speaking for a cause rather than for yourself. I try to navigate this terrain, but frankly there are a lot of blurry lines. Especially when I was writing a lot about Darfur, I sometimes worried about where I was in a relationship to that line. Because of the Times’s rules I don’t speak to fundraisers or closed-door meetings of specific organizations. This is one way to try and keep a certain amount of journalistic distance. On the other hand, when it feels like there are an awful lot of lives at stake, it’s hard not to want to do everything that you can to save those lives. There are real difficulties in trying to figure out when it’s appropriate for journalists to dive into the arena. But sometimes that’s what you have to do.