I woke up at 2 AM with no sleep.

My apartment manager didn’t get my second month’s rent.

What is going on?

Now I need to call my bank.

I drank too much caffeine yesterday

bored

behind my desk at work.

I know the secret to my happiness

but that doesn’t mean

I have it all figured out.

Daily tasks try to eat me up like termites

I am made of wood.

Endurance is my secret—the slow pleasure

of spiritual goals. The external feeds the internal

and the internal feeds the external.

“Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word.”—Jesus

Sometimes, the stuff in books saves us, but only Sometimes

A dark night, with a flashlight, by a fire, reading the stars

and then, letting the words, sink in.

Adversity was my teacher, and now

I am the master.

Life takes more

and as I lose,

I give up

what I don’t need.

Solitary strength is the ultimate power.

You are healthy when you have good relationships

but if you know that you don’t need them, and can still live well without them

you can appreciate what cannot be known in the company of others.

If you take abuse

the tendency is to get aggressive

to assert your boundaries, but this stems from a need

not to get hurt again.

The man who can take a beating

gains something else, entirely.

He gets hit by ignorance

and watches those same people

hurt themselves.

He is thankful

he is not them

because what we do to others

we do to ourselves.

The Mountain stands in his way

and he must not see it

as significant.