Part 5
You will make all kinds of mistakes but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.
Winston Churchill
I first read this quote on the whiteboard in my junior year language arts class in high school. And it struck me so hard, I had to write it down so I could remember it. I still have the quote pinned on my cork board above my desk at home. To this day, it brings me comfort whenever I read it.
Reading that quote at 16 years old gave me such relief. Relief from making the wrong choices, relief from feeling stuck, relief from worrying about what other people might think. At that age, you’re barely figuring out your life and what kind of person you want to be. It feels like there are pressures all around you and you think you have to live up to these expectations.
But this quote taught me that no matter what I did in life, nothing is going to be “the end of the world”. The only thing I had to do was to be myself and make sure that whatever decisions I made were coming from what I thought was best for me. It was important for me to make sure I did things that I felt were true to myself. If a mistake or something wrong happened along the way, it would just be something to learn from before going on to the next thing.
We worry a lot about what others think. I even worry about what others think of my mistakes or what they think are my mistakes. But it doesn’t matter what others think of our actions or how we end up in the situation we’re in. As long as you’re happy, or at least willing to accept your situation so you can move on, then that’s all that matters.
Do you have a favorite quote or saying that you go to to bring a sense of relief to yourself?
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Digital Dreams 