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Perhaps the hardest thing I've learned, and still struggle with, is that I don't have to be finished in order to be whole.

Mark Nepo

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Mark Nepo
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 23
Poet
Brooklyn
New York
Thing
Finished
Perhaps
Learned
Struggle
Order
Stills
Still
Whole
Hardest

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We travel so far only to land where we are. We imagine other lives, only to meet who we are. We seek out love in special ways, only to find everyone is special. Humbly, we can't avoid this journey.
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When wiggling through a hole the world looks different than when scrubbed clean by the wiggle and looking back.
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It has always amazed and humbled me to how the risk to bloom can seem so insurmountable beforehand and so inevitably freeing once the threshold of suffering is crossed.
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Each soul on earth is complete unto itself.
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I've learned that loving your self requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world - our own self worth.
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Like roots finding water, we always wind up moving towards what sustains us.
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For listening to the stories of others ... is a kind of water that breaks the fever of our isolation. If we listen closely enough, we are soothed into remembering our common name.
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If we devote ourselves to the life at hand, the rest will follow. For life, it seems, reveals itself through those willing to live. Anything else, no matter how beautiful, is just advertising.
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As nature erodes the earth into magnificent forms, life through endless experience opens us further and further to the essence of what matters. Each time I've been opened further, the way I experience life and receive things has changed.
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In truth, the more we lean into life, the more we authentically interact with the world, the brighter our flame.
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The greedy one gathered all the cherries, while the simple one tasted all the cherries in one.
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Living is the original art. As a young man I wanted to be a poet and I learned along the way that I already was a poet.
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I would rather be fooled than not believe.
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When the sweet ache of being alive, lodged between who you are and who you will be, is awakened, befriend this moment. It will guide you. Its sweetness is what holds you. Its ache is what moves you on.
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Truth is a seed hidden in the days until watered by what life brings us.
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The mystery is that whoever shows up when we dare to give has exactly what we need hidden in their trouble.
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I would want to affirm how rare and magnificent and messy it is to be alive, how there is really nothing between us and life, though so many things get in the way, and how our heart is the strongest muscle and resource we have.
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I looked a hundred times and all I saw was dust. The sun broke through and flecks of gold filled the air.
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The paradox is that we have this amazing capacity in our minds and hearts to learn and gain insights and then to build a kind of personal storehouse of knowledge. The underside is that those insights harden and fill the spaces in our hearts and minds. They become assumptions, conclusions and judgments.
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Live loud enough in your heart and there is no need to speak.
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