20 Seconds of Courage

19. Not quite an adult. Young at heart.

“If life goes as planned, where’s the fun? As long as you don’t know where life will take you, you can concentrate on living it to the fullest.”

Choose happiness. See the bigger picture.
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Marry your best friend. I do not say that lightly. Really, truly find the strongest, happiest friendship in the person you fall in love with. Someone who speaks highly of you. Someone you can laugh with. The kind of laughs that make your belly ache, and your nose snort. The embarrassing, earnest, healing kind of laughs. Wit is important. Life is too short not to love someone who lets you be a fool with them. Make sure they are somebody who lets you cry, too. Despair will come. Find someone that you want to be there with you through those times. Most importantly, marry the one that makes passion, love, and madness combine and course through you. A love that will never dilute - even when the waters get deep, and dark.
N’tima  (via deprincession)

(via qkeyra)

Airports see more sincere kisses than wedding halls. The walls of hospitals have heard more prayers than the walls of churches.
1. push yourself to get up before the rest of the world - start with 7am, then 6am, then 5:30am. go to the nearest hill with a big coat and a scarf and watch the sun rise.

2. push yourself to fall asleep earlier - start with 11pm, then 10pm, then 9pm. wake up in the morning feeling re-energized and comfortable.

3. erase processed food from your diet. start with no lollies, chips, biscuits, then erase pasta, rice, cereal, then bread. use the rule that if a child couldn’t identify what was in it, you don’t eat it.

4. get into the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. fry tomatoes and mushrooms in real butter and garlic, fry an egg, slice up a fresh avocado and squirt way too much lemon on it. sit and eat it and do nothing else.

5. stretch. start by reaching for the sky as hard as you can, then trying to touch your toes. roll your head. stretch your fingers. stretch everything.

6. buy a 1L water bottle. start with pushing yourself to drink the whole thing in a day, then try drinking it twice.

7. buy a beautiful diary and a beautiful black pen. write down everything you do, including dinner dates, appointments, assignments, coffees, what you need to do that day. no detail is too small.

8. strip your bed of your sheets and empty your underwear draw into the washing machine. put a massive scoop of scented fabric softener in there and wash. make your bed in full.

9. organise your room. fold all your clothes (and bag what you don’t want), clean your mirror, your laptop, vacuum the floor. light a beautiful candle.

10. have a luxurious shower with your favourite music playing. wash your hair, scrub your body, brush your teeth. lather your whole body in moisturiser, get familiar with the part between your toes, your inner thighs, the back of your neck.

11. push yourself to go for a walk. take your headphones, go to the beach and walk. smile at strangers walking the other way and be surprised how many smile back. bring your dog and observe the dog’s behaviour. realise you can learn from your dog.

12. message old friends with personal jokes. reminisce. suggest a catch up soon, even if you don’t follow through. push yourself to follow through.

14. think long and hard about what interests you. crime? sex? boarding school? long-forgotten romance etiquette? find a book about it and read it. there is a book about literally everything.

15. become the person you would ideally fall in love with. let cars merge into your lane when driving. pay double for parking tickets and leave a second one in the machine. stick your tongue out at babies. compliment people on their cute clothes. challenge yourself to not ridicule anyone for a whole day. then two. then a week. walk with a straight posture. look people in the eye. ask people about their story. talk to acquaintances so they become friends.

16. lie in the sunshine. daydream about the life you would lead if failure wasn’t a thing. open your eyes. take small steps to make it happen for you.

I like to wander aimlessly through crowded streets in foreign cities, searching for that one face in the sea of people.

I like to sleep just when the sun is peeking over the horizon, when I’m the first to greet the day before I fall into my endless slumber.

I want to feel the touch of a newborn’s fingers against my cheek, tightly holding on to my pinky, and the joy of witnessing new life.

I’ve often thought how simple life would be if we were all kindergartners once again, running around the playground without a care in the world.

My best friend said to live by faith and not by sight, to know that in the midst of chaos, God has a plan, and sometimes all we can do is let go and let God.

My dreams are of underprivileged children and young women, oppressed, without a voice, yearning for the chance to escape.

My favorite sound is the pitter-patter of rain as it falls on the rooftops, the splat of each drop as it strikes the sidewalk, and my little brother’s giggle as it hits his face.

A memorable smell is the waft of cologne as he walks by – the boy whom I so deeply cared about, the man who taught me so much – a waft which can take me back four years ago to that fated day.

I’ve never been to the land of fairy tales  Prince Charmings, and damsels in distress, that world of make-believe, a bubble others choose to hide within.

I sometimes feel completely amazed at how perfect everything has become, how every piece of the puzzle is finally in its place, and how life does work out in the long run.

The worst thing is settling for less than you deserve, choosing the easy road because you fear failure when your standards should be limitless and your potential overflowing.

Dramatic is my little sister and I when we’re imitating the beautiful people of Lord of the Ring and their glorious mane.

My mother’s voice holds memories that words cannot describe, the good, the bad, the laughter, and the tears of these past 18 years, only one person has been there through it all.

I cry when I saw how beautiful she is, how happy and carefree you are when you’re with her, and when I finally accept that we can never be.

Time is a thing of the past, a mirage of the future, but mine for the taking now, in the present, in this very moment.  The question now becomes – what will I do?

I long for a soul who can understand mine on a level beyond spoken or written words, with an intimacy that forces me to be vulnerable, by a mere chance of fate.

I never will become a mere stop along the way for I am the destination.

I know I really shouldn’t but for some odd reason I feel drawn to you. 

The fact that I’m silent doesn’t mean I have nothing to say.
Jonathan Carroll  (via anditslove)

(via anditslove)

You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy. So let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles.
C. Joybell C.  (via anditslove)

(via anditslove)

Neil deGrasse Tyson

(via vitabrevisarslunga)

What do you say when the feelings don’t fit into words?
Tammara Webber (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

(via eelydnil)

I just thought it was so romantic—the idea that you don’t need to be loved in return in order to love something or someone. Love can come from you. It doesn’t have to be reciprocal. People love their cars. People love all kinds of things, and they really love them. And we don’t really value that kind of love because it’s not a real, reciprocal kind of love, but it’s real love to them…
Ryan Gosling (via imfantasyparade)
I had this bad ass professor in med school. She seemed invincible. And then, one day, she needed her gallbladder out. And the surgery killed her. Her platelets stopped clotting. She bled out on the table. Everything that could have gone wrong – did go wrong. The surgeons have a name for it. We call it a perfect storm. Funny, I never thought it would happen to me.
There’s an end to every storm. Once all the trees have been uprooted, once all the houses have been ripped apart, the wind will hush. The clouds will part. The rain will stop. The sky will clear in an instant. And only then, in those quiet moments after the storm, do we learn who was strong enough to survive it.
Grey’s Anatomy (via anditslove)
I don’t know the secret to success, but the secret to failure is trying to please everyone.
Bill Cosby (via quote-book)