..."but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs."

- Jonathan Safran Foer
via the NYT

"What makes something hard is your emotional relationship to it, not what the thing actually is. Hard becomes easy, if you do it willingly while it’s still hard.

The biggest factor in getting something to go from hard to easy is normally exposure. The more you encounter something, the less intimidating it gets. Your emotional relationship changes. There’s less uncertainty, your skill in dealing with it improves, your resentment for it fades, your craving for ease or salvation disappears. It has become easy.

So if you have a bit of foresight, the easiest thing to do is to make the hard things easy. You make the hard things harder when you let yourself fall into a habit of avoiding them."

- via thoughtcatalog

stolen from sacha part II

But I guess I could neatly sum up the Beatles break-up by quoting one of my comedy heroes, Mr. Jerry Lewis.  Following Lewis’ break-up with his partner Dean Martin after ten hugely successful years together, someone told Jerry he loved him and Dean together and asked how the two could possibly have split up.  Jerry answered with parable: “A man said ‘those are beautiful shoes you’re wearing’ to another man and the second man answered back, ‘yes, but I’m the only one who knows how much they hurt’.”

- via todayifoundout

gentle sadness

"I love the gentle kind
of sadness like a reminder
that I can feel."

- Marianna Paige

stolen from sacha.

One of my philosophy professors lectured wildly about love once, yelling: “When you’re in love with someone, that person is the lighthouse of your universe.” (I scrawled it inside Science and Poetry in pencil—lighthouse of your universe—as if I would ever forget that phrase.) He was a delightful caricature of his position. I could swear he literally tore his hair out while howling at us. He went on, “Nothing means as much without that person.”

One of the men in the class repeated, incredulous, half-laughing “so you’re saying you can’t enjoy, like, a vacation, without someone if you’re really in love with them?”

“Of course not.” the professor replied.

“Not completely. You recognize beauty, but beauty means less if they don’t witness it with you. Beauty is less. You see something sublime and your first thought is that they should be there with you. It’s not as good without them. They illuminate. They make everything more.”

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Can't Hold Us (Live on KEXP)

This makes me smile. Nursing school power song. Take THAT, second semester!

idea of happiness.

I am totally making this this week.

My roommate has za'atar from Israel, and apparently it is delicious.

IN OTHER NEWS.

Spring break is next week and I could not be more excited. Sure, it will still involve care plans, flash cards, and other assorted painstaking assignments, but it will also involve sunshine, my best friends, my family, my dog, and mi amor.

And Emmy's spaghetti. So much of my happiness revolves around food.