Buddhists advise us to “act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference.” This serious playfulness makes it possible to be both engaged and carefree at the same time.

– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi –

The good things in life do not come only through the senses. Some of the most exhilarating experiences we undergo are generated inside the mind, triggered by information that challenges our ability to think, rather than from the use of sensory skills.

– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi –

Even if we don’t want to admit it, the ability to overcome most obstacles is within our hands.

We can’t blame family, society, or history if our work is meaningless, dull, or stressful. Admittedly, there are not too many options when we realize that our job is useless, or actually harmful. Perhaps the only choice is to quit as quickly as possible, even at the cost of severe financial hardship.

In terms of the bottom line of one’s life, it is always a better deal to do something one feels good about than something that may make us materially comfortable but emotionally miserable. Such decisions are notoriously difficult, and require great honesty with oneself.

– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi –

The mental framework that makes science enjoyable is accessible to everyone.

It involves curiosity, careful observation, a disciplined way of recording events, and finding ways to tease out the underlying regularities in what one learns. It also requires the humility to be willing to learn from the results of past investigators, coupled with enough skepticism and openness of mind to reject beliefs that are not sup-ported by facts.

– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi –

Those of us who spend our lives in search of deeper meaning will most certainly become the biggest failures at living a life with meaning.

True fulfillment is found in the moment,

not in the contemplation of moments.

– Samuel Decker Thompson –

Ph : Marta Bevacqua

Despite all that has gone wrong we tend to spend our lives believing we are fated for happiness

and that our destiny is love.

Even in the later years

when we begin to pretend

that we’ve given up hope as a means to cope,

we still turn every fuckin’ corner

with a wish buried deep inside

that we will bump into the one

who will make this miserable life worth the ride.

-Samuel Decker Thompson –

Ph : Adolfo Valente

Gazing at the rain, I consider what it means to belong,

to become part of something.

To have someone cry for me.

From someplace distant, so very distant.

From, ultimately, a dream.

No matter how far I reach out,

no matter how fast I run, I’ll never make it.

“Why would anyone want to cry for me?”

– Haruki Murakami – Dance, dance, dance

Ph : Marta Bevacqua

It was a day like a slow-motion video of twilight. Uneventful, to put it mildly. The lead gray of the sky mixed ever so slowly with black, finally blending into night. Just another quality of melancholy. As if there were only two colors in the world, gray and black, shifting back and forth at regular intervals.

– Haruki Murakami –

… and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.

– Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre