"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Wise words
“I am really moved and motivated by things that occur that are unjust. I’ve always hated people trampling on other people. I was in quandary, a philosophical quandary, because I tought, if I’m not my brother’s keeper, who am I? Where does my life end and my sense of responsibility for other lives begin?” Listen to Me Marlon (2015) dir. Stevan Riley
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill (via forbes)
There is a phrase used to describe people, often strangers, as “ships passing in the night.” The phrase is meant to describe how fleeting the intersection of two lives can be, how briefly people we don’t know can flicker in and out of our lives.
But when I read about the Titanic, I think we can push the phrase further. Because sometimes, as you pass another ship in the night, you may hear a cry in the dark. A person in danger. A shout for help. Distress rockets and SOS signals wailing into the night. A stranger in crisis.
And in those fleeting moments as your ship passes theirs, you get to make the choice- are you the Californian, the closest ship to the Titanic, which saw the distress rockets and saw the lights on the horizon and sat and did nothing; or are you the Carpathia, turning on a dime, pushing all steam to the engines, racing to help.
We can not say for sure what caused the Californian to not help the Titanic in that night of crisis. Whether is was apathy or incompetence or fear, we don’t know.
But we know that every single soul who survived the Titanic survived because of the Carpathia. Because the crew and the passengers of that ship raced nearly 60 miles through ice fields above their maximum speed in the dead of night, readying life boats, readying triage, to pull them from the water.
So, yes, we are ships passing in the night, and when given the chance to turn away or do good, always err on the side of reckless compassion.
“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” - Marissa Mayer, President & CEO of Yahoo
Be the pond, Danny
It's not that difficult to understand!
Wanderer, there is no way, you make the way as you go... Just a wanderer enjoying the rollercoaster.
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