Learning From Our Struggles Quotes

It is in the more muddled moments of my life, that i become painfully aware of my issues. When nothing is going right, when life gets away from me. When i feel like life is living me, instead of me, living life. It's a difficult place be, but it's also where the seeds of change, often take root. And from those roots, a wellspring of hope and positive transformation, blooms. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

Many of our problems are broadly similar to those that undermined ... Norse Greenland, and that many other past societies also struggled to solve. Some of those past societies failed (like the Greenland Norse) and others succeeded ... The past offers us a rich database from which we can learn in order that we may keep on succeeding. ~ Jared Diamond

Our search for the Master Algorithm is complicated, but also enlivened, by the rival schools of thought that exist within machine learning. The main ones are the symbolists, connectionists, evolutionaries, Bayesians, and analogizers. Each tribe has a set of core beliefs, and a particular problem that it cares most about. It has found a solution to that problem, based on ideas from its allied fields of science, and it has a master algorithm that embodies it. ~ Pedro Domingos

Learning from our mistakes and holding on to our memories help us become deeper individuals with a better sense of who we are and how we choose to live our lives. ~ Ron Clark

I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years. ~ Mark Twain

In fact, being able to tolerate negative feelings can be crucial to a wide variety of life situations: delaying gratification, learning from bad experiences, truly hearing what other people have to say, and assessing our own circumstances, risks, and opportunities. ~ Julie K. Norem

That thought, I can't find the right words, is based not on something negative but on something positive. On the positive awareness that art is something great and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from man's soul, while much of the proficiency and technical expertise associated with art reminds me of what would be called self-righteousness in religion. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Peace, or freedom from conflict, is the absolute core of happiness. It is in learning to watch our sense of peace that we avoid unhappiness. All forms of misery are heralded by a frame of mind that must become immediately recognizable if we are ever to gain mastery in happiness ... Take the time to look in your heart and be clear. Walk through life being clear. Practice doing each thing in peace. ~ Hugh Prather

Our art is never really ours. Each person who experiences it brings to it a piece of themselves and reacts to it in ways that stem from their personal struggles, beliefs, morals, and even hang-ups. ~ Teresa R. Funke, Bursts Of Brilliance For A Creative Life Blog

We cannot build the new culture for learning to which we aspire in an environment which is depressed and dampened every day by the impact of alcohol and drug abuse, and we should not, and we cannot, hide from that reality any longer. More and more of our students are demanding that they not be imposed upon by others whose judgment and behavior are impaired by substance abuse. It is time to take a stand. ~ Robert Carothers

Life rises and falls to meet us at the greatest learning potential for our life's story. ~ H.L. Balcomb

We tend to be particularly unaware that we are thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet. And we leave precious little room for ourselves anyway just to be, without having to run around doing things all the time. Our actions are all too frequently driven rather than undertaken in awareness, driven by those perfectly ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for.
Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize us. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

The character of a life isn't set in ten big moments. The character of a life is set in ten thousand little moments of everyday life. It's the themes of struggles that emerge from those little moments that reveal what's really going on in our hearts. ~ Paul David Tripp

If we Americans are to learn from our mistakes, from the flailing, ineffective way we, as a nation, conducted the war on terror after the attacks of 9/11, and from the way we have failed to make our case to the great moderate mass of peace-loving people at the heart of the Muslim world, we need to listen to Greg Mortenson. I did, and it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. ~ David Oliver Relin

October Fullness"

Little by little, and also in great leaps,
life happened to me,
and how insignificant this business is.
These veins carried
my blood, which I scarcely ever saw,
I breathed the air of so many places
without keeping a sample of any.
In the end, everyone is aware of this:
nobody keeps any of what he has,
and life is only a borrowing of bones.
The best thing was learning not to have too much
either of sorrow or of joy,
to hope for the chance of a last drop,
to ask more from honey and from twilight.

Perhaps it was my punishment.
Perhaps I was condemned to be happy.
Let it be known that nobody
crossed my path without sharing my being.
I plunged up to the neck
into adversities that were not mine,
into all the sufferings of others.
It wasn't a question of applause or profit.
Much less. It was not being able
to live or breathe in this shadow,
the shadow of others like towers,
like bitter trees that bury you,
like cobblestones on the knees.

Our own wounds heal with weeping,
our own wounds heal with singing,
but in our own doorway lie bleeding
widows, Indians, poor men, fishermen.
The miner's child doesn't know his father
amidst all that suffering.

So be it, but my business
was
the fullness of the spirit:
a cry of pleasure choking you,
a sigh from an uprooted ~ Pablo Neruda

When we have a job change or we're buying a new home or we have an important decision to make concerning our marriage or family or future, we want a specific word from the Lord. And we need one from Him too. And He will give us one. But my concern is that we sometimes try to hear a specific word from God without first developing the habit of hearing a general word from God every day. That's an important part of the process of learning to value God's voice. If we just check in with God every six months or so whenever a big decision comes up, then we will miss out not only on knowing God's general will but also on a close, everyday friendship with God. So we must learn to value His voice, His general voice, on a regular basis if we want to hear His specific voice from time to time. If we're not in the habit of meeting with Him and hearing from Him on a regular basis, then it will be much more difficult to hear a specific word from God. ~ Robert Morris

Without pain, there would be no suffering. Without suffering, we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life. ~ Angelina Jolie

Humility, the state of being humble, is often misunderstood; it is not a state of weakness, but of strength. It does not mean inferiority, resignation or submission; these imply that we are still resisting our need for help. When we are humble, we are totally willing to accept God's help, knowing that without it we cannot progress further. In humility we possess self-esteem, accept ourselves as we are, assets and defects alike, and extend the same acceptance to others. We are learning to recognize humility in others; we are attracted to them and we learn from them. ~ Al-Anon Family Groups

So either this was a coincidence, or you have a traitor among the alphas."
Jim's eyes flashed green. "There are no traitors on the Council."
I sighed. "Of course not - how dare the mighty shapeshifters have human vices."
Curran leaned half an inch forward. "We're not mercenaries, Kate. Don't measure us by your standard."
Thank you, Your Majesty. I looked at Jim. "The Order appreciates the offer of aid from the Pack, but given the sensitive nature of our investigation, we decline your assistance at this time."
Curran showed me the edge of his teeth. "Are you implying my people can't be circumspect?"
I looked at Jim. "Please relay my congratulations to His Majesty on learning such a big word all by himself. ~ Ilona Andrews

This has been a really tough lesson for me to learn. The people I love, I love hard and without conditions. My loyalty, once earned, will be with you for a lifetime. I really get that we are all connected and that until we all get it, no-one is getting it. That said, I'm also learning that some people are not a good match for us and their presence in our life is incredibly toxic. We can still love them, we just need to love them from a distance. Maybe after a few more reincarnations, we'll be able to love them up close again. ~ Brooke Hampton

Taking the Bible seriously should mean taking politics seriously. The major voices in the Bible from beginning to end are passionate advocates of a different kind of world here on earth and here and now. Many American Christians are wary of doing this, for more than one reason. Some are so appalled by the politics of the Christian Right that they have rejected the notion that Christianity has anything to do with politics. Moreover, the word "politics" has negative associations in our time. Many think of narrowly partisan politics, as if politics is merely about party affiliation. Many also dismiss politics as petty bickering, as ego-driven struggles for power, even as basically corrupt. But there is a broader meaning of the word that is essential. This broader meaning is expressed by the linguistic root of the English word. It comes from the Greek word polis, which means "city." Politics is about the shape and shaping of "the city" and by extension of large-scale human communities: kingdoms, nations, empires, the world. In this sense, politics matters greatly: it is about the structures of a society. Who rules? In whose benefit? What is the economic system like? - fair, or skewed toward the wealthy and powerful? What are the laws and conventions of the society like? Hierarchical? Patriarchal? Racist? Xenophobic? Homophobic? For Christians, especially in a democratic society in which they are a majority, these questions matter. To abandon politics means leaving the structuring ~ Marcus J. Borg

When we reveal ourselves to our partner and find that this brings healing rather than harm, we make an important discovery - that intimate relationship can provide a sanctuary from the world of facades, a sacred space where we can be ourselves, as we are ... This kind of unmasking - speaking our truth, sharing our inner struggles, and revealing our raw edges - is sacred activity, which allows two souls to meet and touch more deeply. ~ John Welwood

When we make the shift to seeing ourselves as transitionary events - as verbs rather than as nouns - we can step back and allow the flow to continue. Our efforts shift from controlling the circumstances of our lives to learning how to meet each brief moment fully and wholeheartedly. ~ Christopher K Germer

My trip to the former Yugoslavia had opened the world for me, and my hunger for the world. In doing so, it undid the contained, safe borders of my existence. Suddenly a woman weeping over her lost son in an image on the front page of The New York Times was no longer a theoretical entity. She was real, a woman I might have met, might have known. I was connected to her. I could no longer divorce myself from her pain, her suffering. Initially this was overwhelming. I had nightmares. I felt restless and wrong in my comforting life in America. Everything seemed absurd and pointless. I came to understand why we block out the pain and atrocities of others. That pain, if we allow it to enter us, makes our lives impossible. It forces us to examine our own values and reality. It insists that we be responsible for others. It thrusts us into the messy world where there are no easy solutions or reasons, only struggles and questions. It creates great fissures in the landscape of our insulated, so-called safe reality. Fissures that, once split open, can never close again. It compels us to act. ~ Eve Ensler

I felt an unfamiliar sympathy for my parents. I seemed unable to take good care of myself, but I wanted to take care of them. For all that I'd tried to disown, and had, I was their perfect alchemy: my father's mother's willfulness and preference of singing to socks full of cash, and my father's need for his own way, somewhere far from most people; my mother's side's obsession with good marks, appearances, lots of noise, and never having enough. By now I had stood in front of many rooms, my first novel in hand. They always asked why you became a writer. An impossible question, but my four-headed answer floated up easily. Immigration gave me a million stories. Learning a new language at nine rather than zero left me astonished by what words could do. Because my people never expressed negative feelings directly (not a bequest of our totalitarian surroundings, but because they wished, above all, to show love, and what kind of love was it, they thought, if you disagreed openly?), I had to learn how to listen for what was meant rather than said, becoming acutely observant. That same love, however, meant I was never discouraged from speaking. A table of adults would fall silent so I could ask, or say. That last was the key: A fellow immigrant writer friend with a nearly identical background had only the first three, and had to work much harder to find the courage to put words on a page. I owed to my elders the career that hand given them such alarm. ~ Boris Fishman

To benefit from what the best teachers do, however, we must embrace a different model, one in which teaching occurs only when learning takes place. Most fundamentally, teaching in this conception is creating those conditions in which most
if not all
of our students will realize their potential to learn. That sounds like hard work, and it is a little scary because we don't have complete control over who we are, but it is highly rewarding and obtainable. ~ Ken Bain

But I don't know, Wesley. This thing makes me think, too. S'pose we'd got Elnora when she was a baby, and we'd heaped on her all the love we can't on our own, and we'd coddled, petted, and shielded her, would she have made the woman that living alone, learning to think for herself, and taking all the knocks Kate Comstock could give, have made of her?"
"You bet your life!" cried Wesley, warmly. "Loving anybody don't hurt them. We wouldn't have done anything but love her. You can't hurt a child loving it. She'd have learned to work, be sensible, study, and grown into a woman with us, without suffering like a poor homeless dog."
"But you don't get the point, Wesley. She would have grown into a fine woman with us; just seems as if Elnora was born to be fine, but as we would have raised her, would her heart ever have known the world as it does now? Where's the anguish, Wesley, that child can't comprehend? Seeing what she's seen of her mother hasn't hardened her. She can understand any mother's sorrow. Living life from the rough side has only broadened her. Where's the girl or boy burning with shame, or struggling to find a way, that will cross Elnora's path and not get a lift from her? She's had the knocks, but there'll never be any of the thing you call 'false pride' in her. I guess we better keep out. Maybe Kate Comstock knows what she's doing. Sure as you live, Elnora has grown bigger on knocks than she would on love. ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

This conditioning of children to fear nonconformity and blindly obey ensures continued obedience as adults. The difficult task of learning how to make moral choices, how to accept personal responsibility, how to deal with the chaos of human life is handed over to God-like authority figures. The process makes possible a perpetuation of childhood. It allows the adult to bask in the warm glow and magic of divine protection. It masks from them and from others the array of human weaknesses, including our deepest dreads, our fear of irrelevance and death, our vulnerability and uncertainty. It also makes it difficult, if not impossible, to build mature, loving relationships, for the believer is told it is all about them, about their needs, their desires, and above all, their protection and advancement. Relationships, even within families, splinter and fracture. Those who adopt the belief system, who find in the dictates of the church and its male leaders a binary world of right and wrong, build an exclusive and intolerant comradeship that subtly or overtly shuns and condemns the "unsaved." People are no longer judged by their intrinsic qualities, by their actions or capacity for self-sacrifice and compassion, but by the rigidity of their obedience. This defines the good and the bad, the Christian and the infidel. And this obedience is a blunt and effective weapon against the possibility of a love that could overpower the dictates of the hierarchy. In many ways it is love the leaders ~ Chris Hedges

And I saw you - I saw you saying that sometimes compassion is understood like being awake, and being unable to react. So every morning, I find myself a different person. I'm always a mystery to myself. If I knew in the first hours of the morning, what I'm going to do, what is going to happen, what attitude or decision should I take? I think my life would be deadly boring because, well, what makes life interesting is the unknown. It is the risks that we take every single moment of our day - of a single day. So, I think that this contradiction should be accepted. Having said that, I mean that learning how to live with our contradictions does not keep us away from the ethic and respecting our neighbor, and learning about tolerance, and learning about compassion. These are two very important words today that were totally forgotten. If you have tolerance and compassion, you can go to the battle, in the metaphoric sense of course, fighting for your dreams without harming anyone. ~ Paulo Coelho

Do not fear the challenges of life, but approach them patiently, with faith in God. He will reward your faith with power not only to endure, but also to overcome hardships, disappointments, trials, and struggles of daily living. Through diligently striving to live the law of God and with faith in Him, we will not be diverted from our eternal course. ~ Rex D. Pinegar

So which theory did Lagos believe in? The
relativist or the universalist?"
"He did not seem to think there was much of a difference. In the end, they are
both somewhat mystical. Lagos believed that both schools of thought had
essentially arrived at the same place by different lines of reasoning."
"But it seems to me there is a key difference," Hiro says. "The universalists
think that we are determined by the prepatterned structure of our brains -- the
pathways in the cortex. The relativists don't believe that we have any limits."
"Lagos modified the strict Chomskyan theory by supposing that learning a
language is like blowing code into PROMs -- an analogy that I cannot interpret."
"The analogy is clear. PROMs are Programmable Read-Only Memory chips," Hiro
says. "When they come from the factory, they have no content. Once and only
once, you can place information into those chips and then freeze it -- the
information, the software, becomes frozen into the chip -- it transmutes into
hardware. After you have blown the code into the PROMs, you can read it out,
but you can't write to them anymore. So Lagos was trying to say that the
newborn human brain has no structure -- as the relativists would have it -- and
that as the child learns a language, the developing brain structures itself
accordingly, the language gets 'blown into the hardware and becomes a permanent
part of the brain's deep ~ Neal Stephenson

We are often let down by the most trusted people and loved by the most unexpected ones. Some make us cry for things that we haven't done, while others ignore our faults and just see our smile. Some leave us when we need them the most, while some stay with us even when ask them to leave. The world is a mixture of people. We just need to know which hand to shake and which hand to hold! After all that's life, learning to hold on and learning to let go. ~ Chanda Kaushik

It is our knowledge - the things we are sure of - that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning. ~ Lincoln Steffens

We understand deeply that until all women are free no man can be free. Even when we believe that we've taken everything into consideration we acknowledge that we may be behaving as badly and as snoolishly as our forefathers. We are learning to recognize this as a culturally inherited blind spot that leads inevitably to the destruction of women and all life on Earth, including ourselves. Moreover:

We resolve to accept counsel when criticism is offered regarding our deficiencies and to make every effort to improve.

We resolve not to unduly burden our Sisters by insisting that they teach us, correct us, and explain to us.

We resolve to respect Women's Space.

We resolve to encourage all women to activate the fullness of their potential and never stand in the way.

We resolve to take responsibility for our share of domestic chores and childcare.

We resolve to meet together regularly as men to learn how to transform our violent tendencies.

We resolve to eradicate all eroticism that depends upon a paradigm of dominance and submission. We resolve to continue diligently the process of forgetting "how to be a man."

Statement from the Biophilic Brotherhood, dated January 1, 2019 BE ~ Mary Daly

Our agency, given us through the plan of our Father, is the great alternative to Satan's plan of force. With this sublime gift, we can grow, improve, progress, and seek perfection. Without agency, none of us could grow and develop by learning from our mistakes and errors and those of others ... I do not really think the devil can make us do anything. Certainly he can tempt and he can deceive, but he has no authority over us that we do not give him. ~ James E. Faust

Our task as we grow older in a rapidly advancing science, is to retain the capacity of joy in discoveries which correct older ideas, and to learn from our pupils as we teach them. ~ Hans Zinsser

I would say that [suffering] is different for all of us, but that it happens when we grow up, when we mature and pass from the childishness of our youthful tears, and become adults. I think that it is a part of growing up, learning to control our suffering. I think that when we grow up, and learn that happiness is rare, and passes quickly, we become disillusioned and hurt. And how much we suffer is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realisation. Suffering, you see, is a kind of anger. We rage against the unfairness, the injustice of our sad and sorry lot. And this boiling resentment, you see, this anger, is what we call suffering. - Abdul Ghani ~ Gregory David Roberts

Social stability comes at the price of wearing a mask, of learning to distance ourselves from our unique nature, from our personal desires, needs, and feelings; instead, we embrace a socially acceptable self. ~ Frederic Laloux

Once we come to see that one's degree of self-control directly mirrors one's self-image, we can understand why we find it so difficult to improve our bodily performance by focusing only on the learning of specific actions. Instead, we might well surmise that to improve one's self-image so that it more nearly approximates reality will result in a general improvement in one's bodily actions. And the results of such an improvement would be both quicker and more extensive than the results from any system of exercises that applies only to specific actions. ~ Moshe Feldenkrais

Mistakes? Well, hell, we all make mistakes. And what's more, we are expected to learn from them. It is part of our journey. It is how we move from innocence to resounding wisdom. It is how we keep from retaining a fucking baby's psyche well into our nineties. It is how everyone keeps from shitting themselves in public and on each other. It is our ever-learning, ever-adapting GPS for this thing called life. ~ Corey Taylor