after silence

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."~ Howard Thurman

[canthemannons]

Hi. Listen to my friend Caitlin’s new single, 22, and enjoy having it stuck in your head.

[viewfromhigherup]

This girl actually has an incredible voice. Like, for reals, check this song out. I unexpectedly really loved it. 

[thirliewhirl]

girls who were bullied most of their life and gain confidence at one point should be feared most because they dont take anyone’s shit no longer and they will destroy you if you think otherwise

[averagefairy]

the worst thing about being shy and introverted is that you most of the time come off as cold and arrogant like you think you’re better than everyone else and thats why you don’t talk to people or hang out with them but it’s really the opposite its like you’re so uncomfortable with yourself that you don’t wanna share it with anyone else so you just dont and people think you’re an asshole but you’re actually just really scared

[mysweetetc]

If someone were to die at the age of 63 after a lifelong battle with MS or Sickle Cell, we’d all say they were a “fighter” or an “inspiration.” But when someone dies after a lifelong battle with severe mental illness and drug addiction, we say it was a tragedy and tell everyone “don’t be like him, please seek help.” That’s bullshit. Robin Williams sought help his entire life. He saw a psychiatrist. He quit drinking. He went to rehab. He did this for decades. That’s HOW he made it to 63. For some people, 63 is a fucking miracle. I know several people who didn’t make it past 23 and I’d do anything to have 40 more years with them.

anonymous reader on The Dish

One of the more helpful and insightful things I’ve seen about depression/suicide in the last couple of days.

(via mysweetetc)

[viewfromhigherup]

While politicians and the media make much of the 27 Australian lives lost in eastern Ukraine this morning, please remember the other 271 lives (and counting) that were claimed in a horrific twist to the Russian-Ukraine conflict. This loss of life is something that will be felt across the whole world, particularly in the Netherlands where so many Dutch passengers boarded this plane only hours ago. As this story unfolds, we will see news outlets and experts speculating on what happened, how it happened and why it happened, and whether it is related to the other Malaysian Airlines incident this year. (It's not, for those playing at home. It's unfortunate, but unrelated.) This tragedy will be exploited for sales/viewers, but we mustn't forget the grieving families and friends of these innocent travellers.  Whatever you're doing today, take a moment and a deep breath. Today may mark a terrible turning point in our history.

[viewfromhigherup]

Maybe strangers enter your heart first, and then you spent the rest of your life searching for them.

Melina Marchetta, The Piper's Son.

[viewfromhigherup]

- Erin Hanson

[viewfromhigherup]

Just found out that there is a posthumous book, a collection of essays by the author of one of my favourite pieces of writing. The piece of writing that is still in my head, two years later. I need this book in my life. I reblogged her last essay here:  http://viewfromhigherup.tumblr.com/post/23989258035/we-dont-have-a-word-for-the-opposite-of

[viewfromhigherup]

[viewfromhigherup]

Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.

Anne Lamott

[lustsandluxuries]

At 19, I read a sentence that re-terraformed my head: “The level of matter in the universe has been constant since the Big Bang.” In all the aeons we have lost nothing, we have gained nothing - not a speck, not a grain, not a breath. The universe is simply a sealed, twisting kaleidoscope that has reordered itself a trillion trillion trillion times over. Each baby, then, is a unique collision - a cocktail, a remix - of all that has come before: made from molecules of Napoleon and stardust and comets and whale tooth; colloidal mercury and Cleopatra’s breath: and with the same darkness that is between the stars between, and inside, our own atoms. When you know this, you suddenly see the crowded top deck of the bus, in the rain, as a miracle: this collection of people is by way of a starburst constellation. Families are bright, irregular-shaped nebulae. Finding a person you love is like galaxies colliding. We are all peculiar, unrepeatable, perambulating micro-universes - we have never been before and we will never be again. Oh God, the sheer exuberant, unlikely face of our existences. The honour of being alive. They will never be able to make you again. Don’t you dare waste a second of it thinking something better will happen when it ends. Don’t you dare.

Caitlin Moran (via scatteredandshining)

[80slove]

Visit Original Link

The Breakfast Club

[viewfromhigherup]

30 years ago today.  March 24, 1984. 

[theimpossiblecool]

“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything good.”

William Faulkner (via theimpossiblecool)

[daisychainsanddarkblueveins-dea]

[songsfromnextweekend-blog-blog]

The Weeknd “Drunk in Love (remix)”

Sooooo silky smoooooth… It takes quite a voice to do justice to Beyonce but I think the Weeknd has that voice.  The original is of course great but I also thought Jay Z kinda mailed in his verse on that so I do not mind that omission.  This is the best Drunk In Love remix I have heard yet.  Much better than T.I.’s.  Not even going to link to that.

[viewfromhigherup]

LOVE this. Did not think Beyonce could ever sound like The Weeknd but far out this track is amazing. 

[viewfromhigherup]

I was talking to a friend one night about this picture that has been doing the rounds for a while, and I said something along the lines of 'Really, what more do you need in life?' The above was his response, and I thought it summed up the meaning of life so nicely that I made it into a thing. 

[viewfromhigherup]

Instructions For A Bad Day

There will be bad days.  Be calm.  Loosen your grip, opening each palm slowly now.  Let go. Be confident. Know that now is only a moment, and that if today is as bad as it gets, understand that by tomorrow, today will have ended. Be gracious.  Accept each extended hand offered, to pull you back from the somewhere you cannot escape.  Be diligent.

Scrape the gray sky clean.

Realize every dark cloud is a smoke screen meant to blind us from the truth, and the truth is whether we see them or not - the sun and moon are still there and always there is light.  Be forthright.  Despite your instinct to say "it's alright, I'm okay" - be honest. Say how you feel without fear or guilt, without remorse or complexity.  Be lucid in your explanation, be sterling in your oppose.  If you think for one second no one knows what you've been going through; be accepting of the fact that you are wrong, that the long drawn and heavy breaths of despair have at times been felt by everyone - that pain is part of the human condition and that alone makes you a legion.  We hungry underdogs, we risers with dawn, we dissmisser's of odds, we blesser's of on – we will station ourselves to the calm.  We will hold ourselves to the steady, be ready player one. Life is going to come at you armed with hard times and tough choices, your voice is your weapon, your thoughts ammunition – there are no free extra men, be aware that as the instant now passes, it exists now as then. So be a mirror reflecting yourself back, and remembering the times when you thought all of this was too hard and you'd never make it through.  Remember the times you could have pressed quit – but you hit continue.  Be forgiving.  Living with the burden of anger, is not living. Giving your focus to wrath will leave your entire self absent of what you need. Love and hate are beasts and the one that grows is the one you feed.  Be persistent.  Be the weed growing through the cracks in the cement, beautiful - because it doesn't know it's not supposed to grow there.  Be resolute.  Declare what you accept as true in a way that envisions the resolve with which you accept it.  If you are having a good day, be considerate. A simple smile could be the first-aid kit that someone has been looking for. If you believe with absolute honesty that you are doing everything you can - do more. There will be bad days, Times when the world weighs on you for so long it leaves you looking for an easy way out.  There will be moments when the drought of joy seems unending. Instances spent pretending that everything is alright when it clearly is not, check your blind spot. See that love is still there, be patient.  Every nightmare has a beginning, but every bad day has an end. Ignore what others have called you. I am calling you friend. Make us comprehend the urgency of your crisis. Silence left to its own devices, breed's silence. So speak and be heard. One word after the next, express yourself and put your life in the context – if you find that no one is listening, be loud.  Make noise.  Stand in poise and be open. Hope in these situations is not enough and you will need someone to lean on. In the unlikely event that you have no one, look again. Everyone is blessed with the ability to listen. The deaf will hear you with their eyes. The blind will see you with their hands. Let your heart fill their news-stands, Let them read all about it.

Admit to the bad days, the impossible nights. Listen to the insights of those who have been there, but come back. They will tell you; you can stack misery, you can pack disappear you can even wear your sorrow – but come tomorrow you must change your clothes.  Everyone knows pain. We are not meant to carry it forever. We were never meant to hold it so closely, so be certain in the belief that what pain belongs to now will belong soon to then. That when someone asks you how was your day, realize that for some of us – it's the only way we know how to say, be calm. Loosen your grip, opening each palm, slowly now – let go."

~ Shane Koyczan