Victor’s Life List

This excerpt is taken from A Return To Love, written by Marianne Williamson. A very insightful book.

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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

—Marianne Williamson—

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This is an excerpt from Mercy by Jodi Picoult. She is one of the best fiction authors I have read. I am not really someone who reads fiction, but I only read her books. I stop reading her books though. I find it too thought-provoking at times. I lent this book from the library to read it and this was one of those excerpts which really hit me to the core. I remembered reading this particular excerpt and stopped to reread it a few couple of times.

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Allie shrugged, but it was more like a shiver. Cam wouldn’t yell, he certainly wouldn’t threaten her, but he’d withdraw. He would think that she didn’t support him or believe in him, and because that hadn’t happened in the five years they’d been married, it could cut him to the quick. ‘It has nothing to do with you, Jamie, or what you did,’ Allie said slowly, carefully picking her way through her own words. ‘I just don’t want to hurt him.’

A smile stole across Jamie’s face, so completely transforming him that Allie would not have recognized him if she’d seen him on the street. ‘Then you’re the one.’

Allie blinked at him. “The one what?”

“The one who loves more.” He moved closer to the desk, and the handcuffs tapped against the metal edge as he inadvertently made gestures. “You know it’s never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It’s always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.”

“I’m the one like you,” Jamie said. ‘The one who fell first. The one who would do anything to keep it the way it was at the beginning.’

Allie felt the room closing in on her. She forced herself to her feet. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Seventy-thirty.”she replied.

“But you killed her.”

Jamie shook his head. ‘I loved her,’ he said quietly. “I loved her so much I let her go.”

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This excerpt is taken from Tuesdays With Morrie written by Mitch Albom. One of those books which are simple to read, yet profound in meaning.

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“Have I told you about the tension of opposites?” he says.

The tension of opposites?

“Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.

“A tension of the opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us life somewhere in the middle.”

Sounds like a wrestling match, I say.

“A wrestling match.” He laughs. “Yes, you could describe life that way.”

So which side wins, I ask?

“Which side wins?”

He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth.

“Love wins. Love always wins.”

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