2 posts tagged “wisdom”

You must have chaos within you
to give birth to a dancing star.

via eve_prime: Nietzche Family Circus

I just finished reading Unbowed Wangari Muta Maathai's memoir (she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, in part for her work founding the Green Belt Movement in Kenya). Not the best-written memoir, and definitely not well annotated or complete (she barely mentions her children or how she managed her high-profile work while they were small except to say she had a housekeeper who watched them). But what struck me most was how she plowed through times of failure and despair and stuck with her original idea even when it seemed like it wasn't going anywhere. I'm a really impatient and easily frustrated person. If my ideas don't get traction quickly, I tend to abandon them figuring if they were good ideas, I'd find support for them immediately. I don't think many people could possibly have the perserverance as this woman had (she was beaten, jailed and exiled) but it's a good example to keep in mind whenever the thought pops into my head: "Nobody cares about what I'm doing. I can't get any funding. I'm just going to quit and do something else."