#persevere-quotes

[quotelr]

The ocean does not lose its splendor because it lost a few drops.

Matshona Dhliwayo

[thoughtsfromb4]

The Angel On My Shoulder Goes By The Name Of Death

Preface: For the last day of mental health month, I wanted to share something I wrote that deals with some rather dark struggles. Struggles that I know others face as well. Struggles that I hope might be eased for just one person who reads this, even if only in the smallest way.

There is an angel who sits upon my shoulder who goes by the name of Death,

And though I cannot always see him, upon my neck I always feel his breath

As he whispers to me relentlessly, deftly using my soul’s own Shibboleth.

He is my phantasmagorical companion from which there has thus far been no escape,

One who has no single voice nor form yet is somehow always horrific in his shape

When my mind’s eye sees him lying in the darkest shadows of my brain's path-illogical landscape.

For while it may be hidden, we are locked in eternal battle, one to which we both are bound,

And though the clashes rage on deep within, the fighting furious and yet without a sound,

The hardest part is not the fighting, it is not knowing if there will be any respite to be found.

This war is one without casualties but still with victims–its battles waged within the mind–

But even having entreated aid from all my demons with any values I could trade in kind,

I have yet to even dream of any type of peace accords to which we would both agree to bind.

But what I have paid in pain to learn in this seemingly Sisyphean struggle is that one cannot sit idly by,

That every new assault of his is an opportunity for me to learn new tactics which I can in future then apply.

Thus I have vowed: Whatever new mental munitions he has in store for me, nor what deadly schemes I must yet defy–

Though I know, like you, I too will one day meet my end, it shall be he who will be the first of us to die.

-- @thoughtsfromb4

[a-path-by-the-moon]

[authenticity2025]

“The only way out is through.” - Robert Frost

[philosophybits]

What cannot man live through! Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

[octavianacidicbreastmilk]

baby reindeer, episode 4

[crossbackpoke-check]

blessed be (lorscher bienensegen) | telling the bees (wiþ ymbe)

"Bees" [remixed, abridged], Claudia Emerson // "Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now" [remixed. abridged], Matthew Olzmann // "Letter to my Great, Great Grandchild" [remixed, abridged], J.P. Grasser | Len Redkole, Nina Weiss, Brian Babineau, Christian Peterson, Mitchell Leff, Dave Isaac, Megan DeRuchie

[kouraissant]

The Sun is dead and love is an unbearable thing (On Yudrein Aile & Grief)

(Above) KOURAISSANT / (Aeschylus: The Oresteia, Aeschylus & The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides, Anne Carson) / Things Haunt, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza / Chapter 514, Turning, 쿠유 / Morning in the Burned House, Margaret Atwood / The opposite of a haunting is something very lonely, heavensghost / A Rosario Castellanos Reader:  ‘Memorandum on Tlatelolco’, tr. Maureen Ahern / Sue Zhao / The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller / The Empress Yamato Hime, tr. Kenneth Rexroth / Spring and All, Cathy Park Hong / UNDER A STAR CALLED SUN / there is no absolution for the fallen, only the dying, p.d / Chapter 1, Turning, 쿠유 / Lesbos (From Ariel), Sylvia Plath

(Below) The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), dir. Mike Flanagan / 6CHO1

[thepersonalquotes]

You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!

PePe Le Pew, Stink of Love: Pepé Le Pew's Guide to L'Amour

[obsidianquill]

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." – Confucius

[mrs-trophy-wife]

It doesn't matter how big it is, if you believe it, it will be.

—Abraham Hicks

[quotelr]

Any training is initially difficult, but with persistence practice, we can master the art.

Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

[blabbershere]

You will either be the villain in someone else's story for standing up for yourself — or a fool in yours if you don't. Pick your poison.

— Samira Vivette

[thatsbelievable]

[philosophybits]

When an effort fails, one declares bitterly that he has lost time and wasted his powers. The failure condemns that whole part of ourselves which we had engaged in the effort. It was to escape this dilemma that the Stoics preached indifference. We could indeed assert our freedom against all constraint if we agreed to renounce the particularity of our projects. If a door refuses to open, let us accept not opening it and there we are free. But by doing that, one manages only to save an abstract notion of freedom. It is emptied of all content and all truth. [...] In order for my freedom not to risk coming to grief against the obstacle which its very engagement has raised, in order that it might still pursue its movement in the face of the failure, it must, by giving itself a particular content, aim by means of it at an end which is nothing else but precisely the free movement of existence. Popular opinion is quite right in admiring a man who, having been ruined or having suffered an accident, knows how to gain the upper hand, that is, renew his engagement in the world, thereby strongly asserting the independence of freedom in relation to thing.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

[davidaugust]

May we keep working and moving toward a more just United States. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. “If you can’t fly, then run, if you can’t run, then walk, if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.