Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul Daily Inspirations (Chicken Soup for the Soul) (47 page)

N
OVEMBER
9

I
was cleaning out my files when I came across some things I had written during my darkest hours. The writing was full of pain and anger. I felt for that woman, for the horrible things she had been through. Tears rolled down my face as I looked into the black hole where I used to live. My first instinct was to throw the pages of despair into the trash, then I realized that this is what all the work had been for. Everything I had been through had allowed me to move outside the hopelessness to a place where I could recognize the light.

Anne Tiller Slates

The life of every man is a diary and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.

James M. Barrie

Footnotes for Life

N
OVEMBER
10

T
ime is the currency of our lives. We get another stash of it every morning. We trade it for what we want or need, or we waste it–it’s really up to us. But one thing is for sure: we can’t save time for tomorrow. We have to use it up today. It won’t wait for us. If we do not spend it on purpose, it’ll disburse itself, one second at a time. It runs out at midnight.

Barbara A. Croce

Life is meant to be a celebration! It shouldn’t be necessary to set aside special times to remind us of this fact.

Leo Buscaglia

Footnotes for Life

N
OVEMBER
11

D
river’s license suspended, I did what any normal person would do. I bought a horse and I rode him every night to my hangouts. Morning would find the horse out back and me in my own bed with no recollection of how we had gotten home. Years later a newcomer in the rooms told us about a young man arriving at her bar drunk on a horse. “I wonder what ever happened to that guy?” she mused. To the amusement of the rest of the group, I took the opportunity to properly introduce myself. I am often asked why I still attend meetings after so many years of sobriety. The answer: my presence might help the newcomer.

Reverend Bob Lew

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Footnotes for Life

N
OVEMBER
12

A
winter landscape can be cold, hard and bleak. The ground is unyielding and barren, devoid of vegetation and hungry for the sun’s warming touch. There is no sign of spring, and you wonder if it will ever come. The tulips of March and the daffodils of April are nothing but a hazy dream.

Life can feel like that. You become lonely and hardened because of attacks and defeats. You step back from relationships and avoid challenges. It is easier to isolate yourself than to be vulnerable once more. And then, out of the hard, snow-covered ground, when it is least expected, a crocus blooms.

Ava Pennington

Have patience with all things, but first of all with yourself.

St. Francis de Sales

Footnotes for Life

N
OVEMBER
13

I
will not insist upon perfection from myself in order to feel good. Why should each thing I do have to be excellent in my eyes, or someone else’s, in order for me to feel happy with it? The idea is that I enjoy the process, that what I do feels satisfying and interesting. Being addicted to success every time means that eventually I will dry up my own creative source because success every time is not natural. When I allow myself to enjoy and experience satisfaction with whatever I am doing, I keep the doors open for my own creative flow. When I do not accept what I do unless it’s just right, I close off my own inner flow.

Tian Dayton

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

Steve Martin

Footnotes for Life

N
OVEMBER
14

I
t is by experiencing something’s opposite that we come to know the thing itself. Fearful, we find faith; a victim, we become empowered. Knowing lack, we understand abundance. Being stuck, we can embrace flow. Enduring pain, we can embody joy. Because we have hated, we can know love. In flirting with insanity, we can understand clarity. Having locked ourselves in a mental prison, we can know freedom. As we peer over the ledge of death, we can truly embody life. To the exact degree that we have cut ourselves off from the divine, infinite flow of God, we can now recognize its presence.

Jeffrey R.Anderson

God gives every bird his worm, but he does not throw it into the nest.

Swedish Proverb

Footnotes for Life

N
OVEMBER
15

W
hat is the difference between maintaining sobriety and living a life in recovery? Staying sober often means just hanging on with white knuckles or facing the day with clenched teeth. Recovery brings heartfelt gratitude and joy to life. Both require a commitment to yourself and both are based on choices. Sobriety is a choice to avoid the negative behaviors that draw you back to the old ways of living and thinking. Recovery is a choice to incorporate positive behaviors into your life that allow you to move toward health and well-being, physically and spiritually.

Joyce McDonald Hoskins

Things do not change, we change.

Henry David Thoreau

Footnotes for Life