From Maryam Moeini-Meybodi, Zeteo Publicity/Outreach Coordinator

30 September 2012

The first thing I saw this morning was the below quote from Marc and Angel Hack Life‘s website. After a long and busy week, this was the first thing I needed to see:

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you aren’t really living at all – you’re merely existing.  You cannot always wait for the perfect time; sometimes you must dare to jump.  Sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage – just literally twenty seconds of uncomfortable bravery – and I promise you, something great will come of it.

I hope everyone starts off their week with twenty seconds of insane courage. 

1 October 2012

Today I came across the following quote for a second time:

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see. — Henry David Thoreau

This time it reminded me of something new. We often struggle to prove ourselves to others. We try to fight off stereotypes and misconceptions. But then is this struggling, and at times “suffering,” really for the sake of educating others or reassuring ourselves that we’re on the right path?

2 October 2012

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke

The above quote is from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. It reminded me of a Persian proverb I often hear from my parents, especially when I become impatient with surprising life events: “With time and art the leaf of a mulberry-tree becomes satin.”

3 October 2012

Women should stop trying to be perfect. Well, that’s what Barnard President Debora Spar suggests in her article “Why Women Should Stop Trying to Be Perfect.” 

Feminism wasn’t supposed to make us miserable. It was supposed to make us free; to give women the power to shape their fortunes and work for a more just world. Today, women have choices that their grandmothers could not have imagined. The challenge lies in recognizing that having choices carries the responsibility to make them wisely, striving not for perfection or the ephemeral all, but for lives and loves that matter.  —Debora Spar

5 October 2012

Today, I read a poetry book that my sister edited a few years ago. The book, Disembodied Kneelings, consists of a collection of poems written by a Hip-Hop artist who converted to Islam. The poems revolve around his spiritual experiences:

and for a moment

it all made sense

and for a moment

there was no tense

and for a moment

it all seemed so potent

and for a moment

it all seemed to open

and for a moment

the sky poured warmth

and for a moment

a truth stepped forth

and for a moment

the pain was pleasure   —Baraka Blue

 

6 October 2012

Today, I came across a quite thought-provoking piece on the emergence of a “change the world” attitude. Dan Pallotta who’s an expert in nonprofit sector innovation, talks about how this attitude is causing us to not see the bigger picture. Our dreams have somehow lost their true essence. But he says there’s still hope for a better world:

 Somehow the dream of changing the world ended up changing the quality of our dreams. It’s not natural. When this era of profound human potential combines with authentic human passions, unlimited by artificial categories and boxes, then the world can really change, into something including — but far more profound than — the world without human suffering we have begun to imagine. —Dan Pallotta

As Paulo Coelho says:

Dreamers can never be tamed.

Click here to read the full article.