When depression takes over

The subjective sense of pain has been rated on par with cancer pain, such that death seems preferable to suffering any longer. Worse, the mind can break free of rational thought, coming up with completely irrational solutions to such suffering: If I die, I am free. My legacy will not include the horrible disintegration inevitably unfolding in the weeks ahead.

via When Depression Kills – FoxNews.com.

Things Worth While

This poem hung on the wall of my grandmother’s house.

Things Worth While

Not what you get, but what you give;
Not what you say, but how you live;
Giving the world the love it needs,
Living a life of noble deeds.

Not whence you came, but whither bound;
Not what you have, but whether found;
Strong for the right, the good, the true;
These are the things worth while to you.

Ludvig S. Dale

For All The World I’ll Never Sell My Soul

For all the beauty there may be
I’ll never throw away my soul
Only for something I don’t know
That one may come on randomly

In savoring the finite joy
The very most one can expect
Is to enfeeble and destroy our taste
and leave the pallet wrecked

For all the sweetness there may be
I’ll never throw away my soul
Only for something I don’t know
That one may come on randomly

For such a lover as the Lord
Tell me if you will be in pain
For his love is the void of taste
Among the things made in this world

Without a foothold you must seek him out
No face nor form alone
Tasting there something I don’t know
That one may come on randomly

And don’t look to your inner eye
Though of vastly greater worth
To find among the joys of earth
The happiness and ecstasy

More than all beauty there may be
Or may have been or can be now
One feeds on something I don’t know
That one may come on randomly

On earth you must never rely
on what the senses understand
Or on all the knowledge you command
Although it rises very high

No grace nor beauty there may be
Will make me throw away my soul
Only for something I don’t know
That one may come on randomly.

Saint John of the Cross

Selected quotations of Joseph Campbell

“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

“God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.”

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.”

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

“I don’t have to have faith, I have experience.”

“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.”

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”

“Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”