kiran’s pensieve

Found this off this blog:

StoryCorps:

StoryCorps is a national project to instruct and inspire people to record each others’ stories in sound.

Listen to audio interviews in a collection of personal stories. Some real interesting stuff…

“There is a time to let things happen, and a time to make things happen.”
–Emerson

“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.”
–Dale Carnegie

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
–Arthur Schopenhauer

“Different is not necessarily better but better is always different.”
–Hugh Lendrum

“You often meet your destiny on the road you’ve taken to avoid it.”

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”
–George Bernard Shaw

“Don’t believe everything you think.”

“It is not the strongest of the species who survive, not the most intelligent, but those who are the most adaptive to change.”
–Charles Darwin

“We can have peace if we let go of wanting to change the past and wanting to control the future.”
–Lester Levinson

“Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I’ll understand.”
–Confucius

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
–Abraham Lincoln

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
–Carl Jung

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams, who looks inside awakes.”
–Carl Jung

“Wisdom is knowing what path to take next… Integrity is taking it.”

“Carefully watch your THOUGHTS, for they become your WORDS. Manage and watch your WORDS, for they will become your ACTIONS. Consider and judge your ACTIONS, for they have become your HABITS. Acknowledge and watch your HABITS, for they shall become your VALUES. Understand and embrace your VALUES, for they become YOUR DESTINY.”
–Mahatma Gandhi

“Criticism is something we can avoid easily — by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”
–Aristotle

“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”
–William Jennings Bryan

“When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it, always.”
–Mahatma Gandhi

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
–Mark Twain

“We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

“It’s easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”
–Adler

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”
–Leonardo da Vinci

“When we are no longer able to change a situation… we are challenged to change ourselves.”
–Victor Frankl

“There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.”
–Archibald McLeish

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
–Johann von Goethe

“You don’t get in life what you want. You get what you are.”
–Les Brown

“Anything in life that we don’t accept will simply make trouble for us until we make peace with it.”
–Shakti Gawain

“If you think that education is expensive, try ignorance.”
–Derek Botz

“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fools for life.”
–Chinese proverb

“Opinions founded on prejudice are always defended with the greatest violence.”

“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely only after they have exhausted all other alternatives.”
–Abba Eban

“A nation that values it’s privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
–Eisenhower

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
–Euripedes

“What luck for the rulers that men do not think.”
–Adolph Hitler

“Those who make peaceful reform impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
–J. F. Kennedy

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
–Martin Luther King

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
–George Elliot

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
–Mark Twain

“The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.”
–William James

“Intuition is not contrary to reason, but outside the province of reason.”
–Carl Jung

“Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.”
–Helen Keller

“Happiness is good health and a bad memory.”
-Ingrid Bergman

“Youth is the gift of nature, but age is the work of art.”
-Garson Kanin

“Lead me not into temptation; I can find it myself.”
-Unknown

“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
-Groucho Marx

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
-Mark Twain

“Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.”
-Unknown

“Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”
-Unknown

“We are all born naked and screaming and if you’re lucky that sort of thing won’t stop there.”
-Unknown

“You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.”
-John Mason

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
-Edith Wharton

“Seeking Common Ground (SCG) was co-founded by five women in response to a growing desire to apply their corporate education and publishing skills to topics closer to heart and home.”

I am deeply inspired and in search of such a group here in Toronto.

Who knows… maybe I’ll just create one!

I recently discovered the strikingly simple and hauntingly beautiful art of Thalia Took.

[image is of the Arab Triple Goddess]

An article in the Malaysian Times claims that humans are worse than any of the natural disasters that occured in 2005, in terms of the amount of destruction, extinction, death and decay that we bring upon the world.

“In general, the impact of the tsunami is a lot less than the human impact,” said Clive Wilkinson, of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, who is preparing a report on the tsunami-hit reefs.

One quarter of all mangroves in Asia have been destroyed by human activity, while dynamite fishing has decimated many coral reefs. Now the fear is that illegal logging and overfishing, long the bane of the region’s environment, will intensify. Timber and coral for reconstruction, while the UN says fish stocks could face collapse because donors are promising many more boats than existed before the disaster and are offering to industrialise what was mostly a subsidence business.

While the Guardian reports that well-meaning citizens who are trying to practice “carbon offsetting” may actually be inadvertently creating other problems:

Tree-planting has always been a controversial method of soaking up CO2 because it is little more than a short term fix. Once the trees die they rot, releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere. “We are buying a few decades to transform our economies,” says Dr Jackson.

So where does this leave the eco-minded citizen who wants to tread a lighter carbon footprint? “Start by doing what you can yourself,” says Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, a government funded company that is charged with helping UK businesses reduce their carbon emissions. “Most of the actions you can take will save you money as well as have a climate benefit.” So installing energy saving light bulbs, insulating the loft or using the car less is a good start.

So that’s where it’s at. The bottom line is that what we are doing to the environment is not something that will “just go away”. The earth is a medley of delicate eco-systems which have been the brunt of abuse for a long time, especially since the industrial “revolution” and the beginnings of mass usage of fossil fuels, including for use in cars.

On the brighter side, there are movements that you can be part of that are developing ideas and products that work to reduce the harmful effects of human civilization.

David Suzuki has set up an excellent venture called the Nature Challenge:

1. Reduce home energy use by 10%
2. Choose an energy-efficient home & appliances
3. Don’t use pesticides
4. Eat meat-free meals one day a week
5. Buy locally grown and produced food
6. Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle
7. Walk, bike, carpool or take transit
8. Choose a home close to work or school
9. Support alternative transportation
10. Learn more and share with others

The Challenge is to pick at least three steps and sign up.

CarFree.com is an excellent site with all kinds of discussions and information about communities built around people, not cars, like what most of urban and all of suburban areas are built.

Transition Culture is a very informative blog with various interesting items about the present and future of energy decline.

These and many other resources are available to us…. the hard part is learning to quit our addictive ways of using and over using energy, whether it be through using less petrol, buying a fuel-efficient car instead of a Hummer or SUV, turning off the lights when we don’t need them, using products not made by torturing animals, or helping the people around us understand the scope of the problem and empowering them with knowledge and resources.

May the sun bring you new energy by day may the moon softly restore you by night, may the rain wash away your worries, may the breeze blow new strength into your being, may you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.
~ Apache Blessing