Quotes About Growth

To us, they are not so much who they are as who they will become.

Sometimes those we forgive change their behavior to the extent that we can eventually be as close to them as we were before (or even closer).

The question isn't whether you should stay or go. The question is: How would your life be transformed if you chose to love this time with all your intelligence?

The PCT had taught me what a mile was. I was humble before each and every one.O

The trees were tall, but I was taller

the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard.

planting a root in the very center of my rootlessness.

Letting go of expectation when it comes to one's children is close to impossible. The entire premise of our love for them has to do with creating, fostering, and nurturing people who will outlive us. To us, they are not so much who they are as who they will become.

When I say you don't have to explain what you're going to do with your life, I'm not suggesting you lounge around whining about how difficult it is. I'm suggesting you apply yourself in directions for which we have no accurate measurement. I'm talking about work. And love.

Each day on the trail was the only possible preparation for the one that followed.

I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a different person, but back to the person I used to be—strong and responsible, clear-eyed and driven, ethical and good.

It is, I guess, exactly what you're stuck with if you can't get some perspective on this matter, sweet pea.

Your question to me is about God, but boiled down to its essentials, it's not so different than most of the questions people ask me to answer. It says: This failed me and I want to do better next time . My answer will not be so different either: To do better you're going to have to try .

It turns out you have to be an apprentice in this world.

It's the threadbare cape you've wrapped around yourself composed of self-pitying half truth. And it absolutely will not serve you.

No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things have befallen you.

And in the meanwhile, cultivate an understanding of a bunch of the other things that the best, sanest people on the planet know: that life is long, that people both change and remain the same, that every last one of us will need to fuck up and be forgiven, that we're all just walking and walking and walking and trying to find our way, that all roads lead eventually to the mountaintop.

Testing yourself means relinquishing the things you believe have so far kept you safe or comfortable

Difficulty, solitude, and risk are the three things that all rites of passage have in common. It's because putting ourselves in situations where we must do hard things that scare us without anyone there to intervene pushes us beyond what we previously thought ourselves capable of. It expands our perception of our own courage, strength, and endurance. It forges us out of who we were before into the person we will become.

I strongly encourage you to let go of these beliefs. They are inaccurate and melodramatic and they do not serve you.

Aside from the people I love, there is little I value more than my education.

The strange and painful truth is that I'm a better person because I lost my mom young," she wrote. "When you say you experience my writing as sacred what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother.

That job and the fifteen others I had before I graduated college were my own, personal "educational opportunities." They changed my life for the better, though it took me a while to understand their worth.

She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.