The name of this series, The Struggle to Right Oneself, hits me deep in my chest.

“Beyond the basic laws that govern and maintain our equilibrium, we live in a world that constantly tests our stability in various other forms.”
- Kerry Skarbakka

This particular image has more of a feeling of intentionality than the others, which to me, indicates more of the choice that we have in how we respond to the tests we encounter.

via Colossal

From the series Be Careful of Things Left Behind by Nigel Grimmer

via Toys with Fragile Feelings – Alice @ My Modern Metr

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

—Carl Sagan

When you talk or write or film, you work with the music inside you, the music that formed you. [...] So for this age, for your time, I want you to just think about this: Think about NOT waiting your turn.

Later on…

If you can… fall in love, with the work, with people you work with, with your dreams and their dreams. Whatever it was that got you to this school, don’t let it go. Whatever kept you here, don’t let that go. [...]

And don’t stop. Just hold on… and keep loving what you love…

- Robert Krulwich, Commencement Speech at Berkeley May 7, 2011

Read the full, very worthwhile speech here.

It’s about journalism, but his wisdom applies to all fields (oh! how the working world has changed!) Read and be inspired… And enlightened!

You are 1 person out of 7 billion people
On 1 planet out of 8 planets
In 1 star system out of 100 billion star systems
In 1 galaxy out of 100 billion galaxies
And you are enormously insignificant.

via swissmiss

(Be sure to click through to read the comments. I especially like the first commenter’s point of view.)

And that was my moment of awareness: that woman across the court who did not know me, and whom I did not know, was a person. She had thoughts of her own. She was. Our lives would never touch. I would never know her name. And yet it was she who revealed to me my first glimpse of personhood.

- Madeleine L’Engle

via Echo-location
(where you can read this snippet in greater context.)

I tend to think that there’s an element of music that cannot be captured. Life cannot be captured. Human heart cannot be captured. The moment of creation itself is fleeting.

Parker Wilson
(played by Richard Gere)
in the movie Hachi

I am tired, Quilan. I have waited for these memories to lose their force over the years and decades and centuries, but they have not. There are places to go, but either I would not be me when I went there, or I would remain myself and so still have my memories. By waiting for them to drop away all this time I have grown into them, and they into me. We have become each other. There is no way back I consider worth taking.

Look To Windward by Iain M. Banks
384

I’m guessing this guy doesn’t usually look this happy on a Monday morning.

That’s the beauty of this Improv Everywhere mission!

Watch below:

Though I actually had much more fun and giggles reading the description with pictures:

High Five Escalator « Improv Everywhere

The point, of course, is that the people who spent days and sweated buckets could also have taken an aircraft to the summit if all they wanted was to absorb the view. It is the struggle that they crave. The sense of achievement is produced by the route to the peak, not the peak itself. It is just the fold between the pages.

Look To Windward
by Iain M. Banks
300