Aspirations For My Child Quotes

I was ten,” I said. “Give me a little credit.” “To a boy with aspirations like that, I would extend my respect—but not credit. Or life insurance.” Abraham sounded amused. “You are an interesting man, David Charleston, but you sound like you were an even more interesting child.

My three key pieces of advice to aspiring authors are: 1) Read as much as you can, 2) write as much as you can, and 3) become a keen observer of life. And once you've done that, finish the @#$% book.

To believe in a child is to believe in the future. Through their aspirations they will save the world. With their combined knowledge the turbulent seas of hate and injustice will be calmed. They will champion the causes of life's underdogs, forging a society without class discrimination. They will supply humanity with music and beauty as it has never known. They will endure. Towards these ends I pledge my life's work. I will supply the children with tools and knowledge to overcome the obstacles. I will pass on the wisdom of my years and temper it with patience. I shall impact in each child the desire to fulfill his or her dream. I shall teach.

We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft, and how a craft can be master of an element. I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup. I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know -- that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it.

It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me. She realized that a child's mind is like a shallow brook which ripples and dances merrily over the stony course of its education and reflects here a flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy cloud; and she attempted to guide my mind on its way, knowing that like a brook it should be fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until it broadened out into a deep river, capable of reflecting in its placid surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees and the blue heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower. Any teacher can take a child to the classroom, but not every teacher can make him learn. He will not work joyously unless he feels that liberty is his, whether he is busy or at rest; he must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way bravely through a dull routine of textbooks. My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart from her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to her--there is not a talent, or an aspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her loving touch.

If a child sees something in a parent that the child aspires to, he or she will copy that parent and be content. If a children feel that a parent is living a life that shows compassion and understanding, patience and love, that child will not have to reach a stage of rebellion against that parent. Why rebel against someone who has listened to you and wants to help you fufill your dreams? A parent who has proven time and again that growth and happiness of his or her children is priority number one does not have to worry about where these children are heading in life. They will be sensitive and productive members of society for as long as they live.

When the great ship containing the hopes and aspirations of the world, when the great ship freighted with mankind goes down in the night of death, chaos and disaster, I am willing to go down with the ship. I will not be guilty of the ineffable meanness of paddling away in some orthodox canoe. I will go down with the ship, with those who love me, and with those whom I have loved. If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and woman and child. It has filled the good with horror and with fear; but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has wrung the hearts of the tender; it has furrowed the cheeks of the good. This doctrine never should be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel, to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine: neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.

It must be this overarching commitment to what is really an abstraction, to one's children right or wrong, that can be even more fierce than the commitment to them as explicit, difficult people, and that can consequently keep you devoted to them when as individuals they disappoint. On my part it was this broad covenant with children-in-theory that I may have failed to make and to which I was unable to resort when Kevin finally tested my maternal ties to a perfect mathematical limit on Thursday. I didn't vote for parties, but for candidates. My opinions were as ecumenical as my larder, then still chock full of salsa verde from Mexico City, anchovies from Barcelona, lime leaves from Bangkok. I had no problem with abortion but abhorred capital punishment, which I suppose meant that I embraced the sanctity of life only in grown-ups. My environmental habits were capricious; I'd place a brick in our toilet tank, but after submitting to dozens of spit-in-the-air showers with derisory European water pressure, I would bask under a deluge of scalding water for half an hour. My closet wafter with Indian saris, Ghanaian wraparounds, and Vietnamese au dais. My vocabulary was peppered with imports -- gemutlich, scusa, hugge, mzungu. I so mixed and matched the planet that you sometimes worried I had no commitments to anything or anywhere, though you were wrong; my commitments were simply far-flung and obscenely specific. By the same token, I could not love a child; I would have to love this one. I was connected to the world by a multitude of threads, you by a few sturdy guide ropes. It was the same with patriotism: You loved the idea of the United States so much more powerfully than the country itself, and it was thanks to your embrace of the American aspiration that you could overlook the fact that your fellow Yankee parents were lining up overnight outside FAO Schwartz with thermoses of chowder to buy a limited release of Nintendo. In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant little boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity. Although neither of us ever went to church, I came to conclude that you were a naturally religious person.

It is perfectly fine if I prioritize my career aspirations over having a child. Not every woman wants to be a mother, and that is okay.

The lives of even quite recent generations might almost disappear from our understanding if we did not think of their aspirations.

And I will pull you inside, saying come in and sit down and tell me more slowly and fully, and I will cry because the process of raising you will have made me sentimental, and I will wrap my arms around you and marvel at how beautiful you are, how tall and strong and shining. And all of my memories of you will dance in front of my eyes as I thirstily listen to all that you have to say, laughing and holding my hands and leaning on my shoulder, or perhaps putting your head in my lap the way you would do as a child. And then it is time for you to leave me again, to go back to your own life, humming with aspiration. You don't have to worry about me—I will be the happiest I have ever been, even as my heart breaks a little to let go of you. Still, I know you will always come back to me. And that will be the only wish I'll have ever known.

I fancy my father thought me an odd child, and had little fondness for me; though he was very careful in fulfilling what he regarded as a parent's duties. But he was already past the middle of life, and I was not his only son. My mother had been his second wife, and he was five-and-forty when he married her. He was a firm, unbending, intensely orderly man, in root and stem a banker, but with a flourishing graft of the active landholder, aspiring to county influence: one of those people who are always like themselves from day to day, who are uninfluenced by the weather, and neither know melancholy nor high spirits. I held him in great awe, and appeared more timid and sensitive in his presence than at other times; a circumstance which, perhaps, helped to confirm him in the intention to educate me on a different plan from the prescriptive one with which he had complied in the case of my elder brother, already a tall youth at Eton. My brother was to be his representative and successor; he must go to Eton and Oxford, for the sake of making connexions, of course: my father was not a man to underrate the bearing of Latin satirists or Greek dramatists on the attainment of an aristocratic position. But intrinsically, he had slight esteem for "those dead but sceptred spirits"; having qualified himself for forming an independent opinion by reading Potter's Aeschylus, and dipping into Francis's Horace. To this negative view he added a positive one, derived from a recent connexion with mining speculations; namely, that scientific education was the really useful training for a younger son. Moreover, it was clear that a shy, sensitive boy like me was not fit to encounter the rough experience of a public school. Mr. Letherall had said so very decidedly. Mr. Letherall was a large man in spectacles, who one day took my small head between his large hands, and pressed it here and there in an exploratory, suspicious manner - then placed each of his great thumbs on my temples, and pushed me a little way from him, and stared at me with glittering spectacles. The contemplation appeared to displease him, for he frowned sternly, and said to my father, drawing his thumbs across my eyebrows - 'The deficiency is there, sir-there; and here,' he added, touching the upper sides of my head, 'here is the excess. That must be brought out, sir, and this must be laid to sleep.' I was in a state of tremor, partly at the vague idea that I was the object of reprobation, partly in the agitation of my first hatred - hatred of this big, spectacled man, who pulled my head about as if he wanted to buy and cheapen it. ("The Lifted Veil")

But young children, whose prefrontal cortexes have barely begun to ripen, can’t conceive of a future, which means they spend their lives in the permanent present, a forever feeling of right now. At times, this is a desirable state of consciousness; indeed, for meditators, it’s the ultimate aspiration. But living in the permanent present is not a practical parenting strategy. “Everybody would like to be in the present,” says Daniel Gilbert, a social psychologist at Harvard and author of the 2006 best-seller Stumbling on Happiness. “Certainly it’s true that there is an important role for being present in our lives. All the data say that. My own research says that.” The difference is that children, by definition, only live in the present, which means that you, as a parent, don’t get much of a chance. “Everyone is moving at the same speed toward the future,” he says. “But your children are moving at that same speed with their eyes closed. So you’re the ones who’ve got to steer.” He thinks about this for a moment. “You know, back in the early seventies, I hung out with a lot of people who wanted to live in the present. And it meant that no one paid the rent.” In effect, parents and small children have two completely different temporal outlooks. Parents can project into the future; their young children, anchored in the present, have a much harder time of it. This difference can be a formula for heartbreak for a small child.

The moral, dear child, is that such powers are never to be considered as the main object; it ought in fact to be obvious from the start that any one's True Will must be deeper and more comprehensive than any mere technical achievement. I will go further and say that any such endeavour must be a magical mistake, like cherishing a gun or a clock or a fishing-rod for its own sake, and not for the use that one can make of it. Indeed, that remark goes to the root of the matter; for all these powers, if we understand them properly, are natural by-products of one's real Great Work. My own experience was very convincing on this point; for one power after another came popping up when it was least wanted, and I saw at once that they represented so many leaks in my boat. And really they are quite a bit of a nuisance. Their possession is so flattering, and their seduction so subtle. One understands at once why all the first-class Teachers insist so sternly that the Siddhi (or Iddhi) must be rejected firmly by the Aspirant, if he is not to be side-tracked and ultimately lost.

To that point, I remember when visiting my parents’ years later, I happened to catch an old episode of The French Chef. Because my interest in food had grown, I watched it with even more attentiveness than I had when I was young. But on this particular occasion, I was taken aback by my reaction when Mrs Child bid US her ubiquitous farewell, ‘This is Julia Child, bon appétit!’ My eyes suddenly welded up and I had to stop myself from crying: why was I suddenly experiencing a powerful rush of emotion because a black and white moving image of a chef was saying goodbye to me in French? After a few moments, I realised that I was moved by Mrs Child not only because she brought back happy boyhood memories of spending time with my mom but also because Julia herself was so genuinely happy to be doing what she was doing. I saw in that moment the embodiment of what I, and so many of us, aspire to. To spend your life doing what you love and doing it well. To achieve this is a rare thing, but for those who can, real joy is theirs, as is the ability to bring that joy to others through their chosen vacation.

My generation was raised in an era of increasing equality, a trend we thought would continue. In retrospect, we were naïve and idealistic. Integrating professional and personal aspirations proved far more challenging than we had imagined. During the same years that our careers demanded maximum time investment, our biology demanded that we have children. Our partners did not share the housework and child rearing, so we found ourselves with two full-time jobs. The workplace did not evolve to give us the flexibility we needed to fulfill our responsibilities at home. We anticipated none of this.

And I will pull you inside, saying come in and sit down and tell me more slowly and fully, and I will cry because the process of raising you will have made me sentimental, and I will wrap my arms around you and marvel at how beautiful you are, how tall and strong and shining. And all of my memories of you will dance in front of my eyes as I thirstily listen to all that you have to say, laughing and holding my hands and leaning on my shoulder, or perhaps putting your head in my lap the way you would do as a child. And then it is time for you to leave me again, to go back to your own life, humming with aspiration. You don’t have to worry about me – I will be the happiest I have ever been, even as my heart breaks a little to let go of you. Still, I know you will always come back to me. And that will be the only wish I’ll have ever known.

In 1933 things were still being taught in the higher educational establishments which had been proven by science to be false as long ago as 1899. The young man who wishes to keep abreast of the times, therefore, had to accept a double load on his unfortunate brain. In a hundred years' time, the number of people wearing spectacles, and the size of the human brain, will both have increased considerably; but the people will be none the more intelligent. What they will look like, with their enormous, bulging heads, it is better not to try to imagine; they will probably be quite content with their own appearance, but if things continue in the manner predicted by the scientists, I think we can count ourselves lucky that we shall not live to see them! When I was a schoolboy, I did all I could to get out into the open air as much as possible—my school reports bear witness to that ! In spite of this, I grew up into a reasonably intelligent young man, I developed along very normal lines, and I learnt a lot of things of which my schoolfellows learnt nothing. In short, our system of education is the exact opposite of that practised in the gymnasia of ancient days. The Greek of the golden age sought a harmonious education; we succeed only in producing intellectual monsters. Without the introduction of conscription, we should have fallen into complete decadence, and it is thanks to this universal military service that the fatal process has been arrested. This I regard as one of the greatest events in history. When I recall my masters at school, I realise that half of them were abnormal; and the greater the distance from which I look back on them, the stronger is my conviction that I am quite right. The primary task of education is to train the brain of the young. It is quite impossible to recognise the potential aspirations of a child of ten. In old days teachers strove always to seek out each pupil's weak point, and by exposing and dwelling on it, they successfully killed the child's self-confidence. Had they, on the contrary, striven to find the direction in which each pupil's talents lay, and then concentrated on the development of those talents, they would have furthered education in its true sense. Instead, they sought mass-production by means of endless generalisations. A child who could not solve a mathematical equation, they said, would do no good in life. It is a wonder that they did not prophesy that he would come to a bad and shameful end! Have things changed much to-day, I wonder? I am not sure, and many of the things I see around me incline me to the opinion that they have not.

It’s not always so easy, it turns out, to identify your core personal projects. And it can be especially tough for introverts, who have spent so much of their lives conforming to extroverted norms that by the time they choose a career, or a calling, it feels perfectly normal to ignore their own preferences. They may be uncomfortable in law school or nursing school or in the marketing department, but no more so than they were back in middle school or summer camp. I, too, was once in this position. I enjoyed practicing corporate law, and for a while I convinced myself that I was an attorney at heart. I badly wanted to believe it, since I had already invested years in law school and on-the-job training, and much about Wall Street law was alluring. My colleagues were intellectual, kind, and considerate (mostly). I made a good living. I had an office on the forty-second floor of a skyscraper with views of the Statue of Liberty. I enjoyed the idea that I could flourish in such a high-powered environment. And I was pretty good at asking the “but” and “what if” questions that are central to the thought processes of most lawyers. It took me almost a decade to understand that the law was never my personal project, not even close. Today I can tell you unhesitatingly what is: my husband and sons; writing; promoting the values of this book. Once I realized this, I had to make a change. I look back on my years as a Wall Street lawyer as time spent in a foreign country. It was absorbing, it was exciting, and I got to meet a lot of interesting people whom I never would have known otherwise. But I was always an expatriate. Having spent so much time navigating my own career transition and counseling others through theirs, I have found that there are three key steps to identifying your own core personal projects. First, think back to what you loved to do when you were a child. How did you answer the question of what you wanted to be when you grew up? The specific answer you gave may have been off the mark, but the underlying impulse was not. If you wanted to be a fireman, what did a fireman mean to you? A good man who rescued people in distress? A daredevil? Or the simple pleasure of operating a truck? If you wanted to be a dancer, was it because you got to wear a costume, or because you craved applause, or was it the pure joy of twirling around at lightning speed? You may have known more about who you were then than you do now. Second, pay attention to the work you gravitate to. At my law firm I never once volunteered to take on an extra corporate legal assignment, but I did spend a lot of time doing pro bono work for a nonprofit women’s leadership organization. I also sat on several law firm committees dedicated to mentoring, training, and personal development for young lawyers in the firm. Now, as you can probably tell from this book, I am not the committee type. But the goals of those committees lit me up, so that’s what I did. Finally, pay attention to what you envy. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire. I met my own envy after some of my former law school classmates got together and compared notes on alumni career tracks. They spoke with admiration and, yes, jealousy, of a classmate who argued regularly before the Supreme Court. At first I felt critical. More power to that classmate! I thought, congratulating myself on my magnanimity. Then I realized that my largesse came cheap, because I didn’t aspire to argue a case before the Supreme Court, or to any of the other accolades of lawyering. When I asked myself whom I did envy, the answer came back instantly. My college classmates who’d grown up to be writers or psychologists. Today I’m pursuing my own version of both those roles.

Maybe tangled will be a spectacular rump. maybe i will adore it: it could happen. But one thing is for sure: tangled will not be rapunzel. And thats too bad , because rapunzel is an specially layered and relevant fairytale, less about the love between a man and a woman than the misguided attempts of a mother trying to protect her daughter from (what she perceives ) as the worlds evils. The tale, you may recall, begins with a mother-to-bes yearning for the taste of rapunzel, a salad green she spies growing in the garden of the sorceress who happens to live next door. The womans craving becomes so intense , she tells her husband that if he doesn't fetch her some, she and their unborn baby will die. So he steals into the baby's yard, wraps his hands around a plant, and, just as he pulls... she appears in a fury. The two eventually strike a bargain: the mans wife can have as much of the plant as she wants- if she turns over her baby to the witch upon its birth. `i will take care for it like a mother,` the sorceress croons (as if that makes it all right). Then again , who would you rather have as a mom: the woman who would do anything for you or the one who would swap you in a New York minute for a bowl of lettuce? Rapunzel grows up, her hair grows down, and when she is twelve-note that age-Old Mother Gothel , as she calls the witch. leads her into the woods, locking her in a high tower which offers no escape and no entry except by scaling the girls flowing tresses. One day, a prince passes by and , on overhearing Rapunzel singing, falls immediately in love (that makes Rapunzel the inverse of Ariel- she is loved sight unseen because of her voice) . He shinnies up her hair to say hello and , depending on the version you read, they have a chaste little chat or get busy conceiving twins. Either way, when their tryst is discovered, Old Mother Gothel cries, `you wicked child! i thought i had separated you from the world, and yet you deceived me!` There you have it : the Grimm`s warning to parents , centuries before psychologists would come along with their studies and measurements, against undue restriction . Interestingly the prince cant save Rapuzel from her foster mothers wrath. When he sees the witch at the top of the now-severed braids, he jumps back in surprise and is blinded by the bramble that breaks his fall. He wanders the countryside for an unspecified time, living on roots and berries, until he accidentally stumbles upon his love. She weeps into his sightless eyes, restoring his vision , and - voila!- they rescue each other . `Rapunzel` then, wins the prize for the most egalitarian romance, but that its not its only distinction: it is the only well-known tale in which the villain is neither maimed nor killed. No red-hot shoes are welded to the witch`s feet . Her eyes are not pecked out. Her limbs are not lashed to four horses who speed off in different directions. She is not burned at the stake. Why such leniency? perhaps because she is not, in the end, really evil- she simply loves too much. What mother has not, from time to time, felt the urge to protect her daughter by locking her in a tower? Who among us doesn't have a tiny bit of trouble letting our children go? if the hazel branch is the mother i aspire to be, then Old Mother Gothel is my cautionary tale: she reminds us that our role is not to keep the world at bay but to prepare our daughters so they can thrive within it. That involves staying close but not crowding them, standing firm in one`s values while remaining flexible. The path to womanhood is strewn with enchantment , but it also rifle with thickets and thorns and a big bad culture that threatens to consume them even as they consume it. The good news is the choices we make for our toodles can influence how they navigate it as teens. I`m not saying that we can, or will, do everything `right,` only that there is power-magic-in awareness.

All meditators who practice shamatha Have powerful experiences, vivid and clear, And are happy, thinking that experience is vipashyana.*10 But when the vipashyana of dharmakaya at the time of death is needed, Mother and child luminosity do not meet. That shamatha from before won’t help at death, And again, they’ll be trapped in the animal realm. Upasaka son, supreme protector,*11 now listen! When resting evenly in meditation with the points of body, If appearances cease and you are without thoughts, These are the doings of a lethargic shamatha. But when you rouse yourself with mindfulness, It’s like a candle, self-luminous and shining bright, Or like a flower that’s naturally vivid and clear. Like looking with your eyes at the glow of the sky, Awareness-emptiness is naked, open, and clear. That nonconceptuality that’s luminous and clear Is the arising of the shamatha experience. On the basis of that meditative experience, While supplicating the precious jewels, Gain certainty by studying and contemplating the dharma. Take the vipashyana that brings the understanding of no self And tie the sturdy rope of shamatha to that.*12 Then that strong noble being with love and compassion Through the mighty strength of rousing bodhichitta to benefit others, Having been lifted up with a pure aspiration To the completely pure path of seeing, There, vipashyana directly realizes the purity that cannot be seen And then the faults of mind’s hopes and fears will be known. Without going anywhere, you’ll arrive at the Buddha’s ground. Without looking at anything, you’ll see dharmakaya. Without achieving anything, your aim will be spontaneously accomplished. My upasaka son, work with mind like this.

I would like to potter about, hopefully putting more good than bad into the world and finding ways to be of service, but otherwise raising my child, cultivating my garden, and enjoying the company of my family and friends and the many magnificent, tattered volumes on my bookshelves.

Having spent so much time navigating my own career transition and counseling others through theirs, I have found that there are three key steps to identifying your own core personal projects. First, think back to what you loved to do when you were a child. How did you answer the question of what you wanted to be when you grew up? The specific answer you gave may have been off the mark, but the underlying impulse was not. If you wanted to be a fireman, what did a fireman mean to you? A good man who rescued people in distress? A daredevil? Or the simple pleasure of operating a truck? If you wanted to be a dancer, was it because you got to wear a costume, or because you craved applause, or was it the pure joy of twirling around at lightning speed? You may have known more about who you were then than you do now. Second, pay attention to the work you gravitate to. At my law firm I never once volunteered to take on an extra corporate legal assignment, but I did spend a lot of time doing pro bono work for a nonprofit women’s leadership organization. I also sat on several law firm committees dedicated to mentoring, training, and personal development for young lawyers in the firm. Now, as you can probably tell from this book, I am not the committee type. But the goals of those committees lit me up, so that’s what I did. Finally, pay attention to what you envy. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire. I met my own envy after some of my former law school classmates got together and compared notes on alumni career tracks. They spoke with admiration and, yes, jealousy, of a classmate who argued regularly before the Supreme Court. At first I felt critical. More power to that classmate! I thought, congratulating myself on my magnanimity. Then I realized that my largesse came cheap, because I didn’t aspire to argue a case before the Supreme Court, or to any of the other accolades of lawyering. When I asked myself whom I did envy, the answer came back instantly. My college classmates who’d grown up to be writers or psychologists. Today I’m pursuing my own version of both those roles.

This is it. Our little, rundown Morisaki Bookshop. I had so many aspirations. I flew all over the world only to end up back at the place I’d known every bit of since I was a child. Hilarious, isn’t it? After all that time, I came back here. That’s when I finally realized it wasn’t just a question of where I was. It was about something inside me. No matter where I went, no matter who I was with, if I could be honest with myself, then that was where I belonged. By the time I realized that, half my life was over. So I went back to my favorite harbor, and I decided to drop anchor. For me, this is a sacred place. It’s where I feel most at ease.

What I mean is, that the real gladness of life is not in these great occasions of pleasure, but in the little side delights that come in the midst of one’s work, don’t they, papa? Why is it worth while to go and search for a day’s pleasuring?” “Ethel, my child! I don’t like to hear you talk so,” said Dr. May, looking anxiously at her. “It may be too true, but it is not youthful nor hopeful. It is not as your mother or I felt in our young days, when a treat was a treat to us, and gladdened our hearts long before and after. I am afraid you have been too much saddened with loss and care—” “Oh, no, papa!” said Ethel, rousing herself, though speaking huskily. “You know I am your merry Ethel. You know I can be happy enough—only at home—” And Ethel, though she had tried to be cheerful, leaned against his arm, and shed a few tears. “The fact is, she is tired out,” said Dr. May soothingly, yet half laughing. “She is not a beauty or a grace, and she is thoughtful and quiet, and so she moralises, instead of enjoying, as the world goes by. I dare say a night’s rest will make all the difference in the world.

I tend to have really interested conversations with employers. They enjoy my interviews and they always last a little longer than norm for i have so much to say and as one said, i am but a breath of fresh air. I was asked what motivates me? I told them my children. When i was a child, i wanted to be like Oprah. I want to be the kind of person my children will be aspire to be. I want my daughter to say she wants to be like me.

What Nelson saw driving me arises from a different kind of aspiration: the desire to do for others, to help make things right for them. Strange ambition for a child? Some might say so, but I’ve been aware of it for as long as I can remember. Self-aggrandizing? I’ve never felt such release from the awkward hold of ego as when helping others. Reaction to early years in a house of pain? Perhaps, but at some point I let go of my compulsion to please: it’s my own standard of character that I need to meet. In any case, I’m sure of having learned it from others, my examples. And very good ones.

In addition to the external barriers erected by society, women are hindered by barriers that exist within ourselves. We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in. We internalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives - the messages that say it's wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than men. We lower our own expectations of what we can achieve. We continue to do the majority of the housework and child care. We compromise our career goals to make room for partners and children who may not even exist yet. Compared to our male colleagues, fewer of us aspire to senior positions. This is not a list of things other women have done. I have made every mistake on this list. At times, I still do. My argument is that getting rid of these internal barriers is critical to gaining power. Others have argued that women can get to the top only when the institutional barriers are gone. This is the ultimate chicken-and-egg situation. The chicken: Women will tear down the external barriers once we achieve leadership roles. We will march into our bosses' offices and demand what we need, including pregnancy parking. Or better yet, we'll become bosses and make sure all women have what they need. The egg: We need to eliminate the external barriers to get women into those roles in the first place. Both sides are right. So rather than engage in philosophical arguments over which comes first, let's agree to wage battles on both fronts. They are equally important. I am encouraging women to address the chicken, but I fully support those who are focusing on the egg. Internal obstacles are rarely discussed and often underplayed. Throughout my life, I was told over and over about inequalities in the workplace and how hard it would be to have a career and a family. I rarely heard anything, however, about the ways I might hold myself back. These internal obstacles deserve a lot more attention, in part because they are under our own control. We can dismantle the hurdles in ourselves today. We can start this very moment.

face.” I sat spellbound. Here it was — the image of grace I had been seeking: an aspiring father bringing unconditional acceptance to a child who had absolutely nothing to offer, no accolades or accomplishments, just herself in all of her vulnerability and scars and weaknesses. My eyes moistened. This is the love of a dad. Maybe — just maybe — this is the love of a Father.

This is my child. The child that could, and will, change the course of my life. You couldn’t understand, and I don’t expect you to. The future holds nothing but pain for me. Pain and loneliness. I don’t have hopes or aspirations. I can’t even contemplate what is to come. Because I know there’s nothing but nothing.

There’s an old saying: A child can’t aspire to be what he doesn’t see. Dana had been a kid just like me, running around the same New York streets, talking about the same kind of

HH Dalai Lama: Some forms of meditation are very difficult. One of my close friends was a very good meditator who attempted to cultivate single-pointedness of mind. He had the experience of spending a few years in a Chinese prison, and he told me that the meditation was actually harder than being a prisoner. The point is that he had to be constantly aware and attentive without losing his attention even for a moment. A constant vigilance was required. One factor that needs to be taken into account is the intensity and quality of the meditator’s motivation. In the traditional Buddhist context, meditators are highly motivated individuals who have a deep appreciation of the framework of the Buddhist path and an understanding of its causes and effects: If I do this, this will happen. They understand the nature of the path and its culmination. There is a deep recognition that the fulfillment of one’s aspiration for happiness really lies in the transformation of one’s undisciplined state to a more disciplined state of mind. These individuals take into account all of this context, so when they engage in meditation, they have a tremendous sense of dedication, joy, a very strong motivation, and sustained enthusiasm. But if you just tell a child, with no context at all, to start meditating, there will be no incentive, no inspiration. Robert, you made the comment that in small doses, stress can actually raise dopamine levels, which we assume corresponds in the rat to a heightened sense of well-being or pleasure. I wonder whether there might be an analogue in meditation, specifically in the training of single-pointed attention, or samadhi, which is not uniquely Buddhist. As one trains incrementally in developing attention, a quality arises that is described as suppleness or malleability of the body and mind, and is often conjoined with a sense of well-being, perhaps even bliss. It happens very strongly when one achieves a high state of samadhi, but even incrementally along the path, there are many surges of this type of malleability together with a kind of bliss. This may be an interesting area of research, to see from the neurophysiological perspective what some of the unexpected events are that come out of such attentional training.

My first crush also inspired my first nemesis. Let’s just call him Chad, a tall, skinny, white kid with blonde hair who looked like the promethean Aryan child, molded from the aspirational dreams of white nationalists everywhere. Despite accomplishing nothing of significance in his six years of life, Chad was a cocky bastard who walked like a mediocre white man who woke up every day thinking he pissed excellence.

And I will pull you inside, saying come in and sit down and tell me more slowly and fully, and I will cry because the process of raising you will have made me sentimental, and I will wrap my arms around you and marvel at how beautiful you are, how tall and strong and shining. And all of my memories of you will dance in front of my eyes as I thirstily listen to all that you have to say, laughing and holding my hands and leaning on my shoulder, or perhaps putting your head in my lap the way you would do as a child. And then it is time for you to leave me again, to go back to your own life, humming with aspiration. You don't have to worry about me—I will be the happiest I have ever been, even as my heart breaks a little to let go of you. Still, I know you will always come back to me. And that will be the only wish I'll have ever known.

I will cry because the process of raising you will have made me sentimental, and I will wrap my arms around you and marvel at how beautiful you are, how tall and strong and shining. And all of my memories of you will dance in front of my eyes as I thirstily listen to all that you have to say, laughing and holding my hands and leaning on my shoulder, or perhaps putting your head in my lap the way you would do as a child. And then it is time for you to leave me again, to go back to your own life, humming with aspiration. You don't have to worry about me - I will be the happiest I have ever been, even as my heart breaks a little to let go of you.

Yet, I recognize that my journey is far from over. The fire within me burns bright, propelling me forward with a hunger to make a lasting impact on the world. Motivated not by material gain but by a deep sense of purpose, I aspire to be a beacon of hope for others. My ultimate Ieo8 extends beyond leaving a legacy in business; it is about touching countless lives, empowering individuals to overcome adversities and reach for the stars

Wild child,” Jade said. I’d figured as much. The 13 tattooed on her calf was a declaration of sovereignty or a cry for attention. It required twelve jurors and one judge to send an original G to the pen. Everybody knows that, though; real criminals and aspiring delinquents alike. She’d forgotten the ½, which meant “half a chance.” It didn’t mean anything except I should keep one eye open and my hand on my wallet.

O My Stars by Stewart Stafford Sweet stars of my youth I have aged, but you have not As a child, you were the wondrous dreams I aspired to In later life, you were still so bitterly distant Yet always mesmeric in your beauty With awe and gratitude for your companionship If there is another side, you shall be the celestial shore I walk upon With earthly depths beneath Where others see and dream and reach up for you. © Stewart Stafford, 2020. All rights reserved.

When jealousy surges through thy heart Let not thy foolish tongue take part. With my two arms, I do not aspire to touch the sky. So, like a child after its mother, I flutter. Now lust shakes my soul, A wind on the mountain overwhelming the oaks. I know not what to do: I have two minds. Face me, my dear one and unveil the grace in your eyes. And a sweet expression spreads over her fair face. I love refinement and for me Love has the splendor and beauty of the morning star. I yearn and I seek. To you, fair maidens, my mind does not change.

Thich Nhat Hanh has taught, “The only way for you to transform the pain as a victim of sexual abuse is to become a bodhisattva. You take a vow to aspire to protect individuals, couples, families, and children from sexual abuse. In this way, you become a bodhisattva. And when the bodhisattva energy is in you, the suffering of being a victim of sexual abuse will begin to dissolve.” A bodhisattva is an ideal of a person who not only becomes enlightened for themselves, but also for others; they are an embodiment of compassion. Of course, not everyone who was abused will aspire to become a bodhisattva or even a spiritually oriented person, but this teaching can help anyone to take a step on a path of compassion, starting with self-compassion toward their inner child and radiating outward in their speech, thoughts, and actions toward others. Thich Nhat Hanh’s words gave me the strength and inspiration to live my life as a healer.

I am human, and selfish. I feel no shame at displaying my Iranian face in my writings or in my private life, at remembering aloud how I once lived, and what I lost, and how I’ve been altered. The shame comes afterward, when I am waved into a waiting taxi while a darker person waits across the street. It has taken decades to see that Western society, this institution to which I aspired, is badly broken and that I benefit from its faults in ways that I didn’t as a child and that my brother still doesn’t.

Besides that, my aspirations have never been child-centered.