stefanie says

There’s a line by the Italian writer Carlo Levi that I think is apt here: “The future has an ancient heart.” I love it because it expresses with such grace and economy what is certainly true - that who we become is born of who we most primitively are; that we both know and cannot possibly know what it is we’ve yet to make manifest in our lives. (via)

My convocation consisted of awkward small talk with the neighbouring graduates (I felt foolish and simpleminded when the girl next to me casually talked about her “thirst for knowledge” even as my mind filled with mundane thoughts of grocery lists and whether my dress matched my shoes), disappointingly uninspiring speeches by faces I have never seen before and will never recognize again, and trying not to nod off as a list of phD thesis paper titles I couldn’t understand were read out.

I spent the rest of the service catching up on my Instapaper feed. Someone linked to this article a few days ago, and I’m very glad I saved it because as a recent Arts school graduate with a stereotypical crisis of confidence over her Screenwriting degree, it is a very comforting thing to read.

(via) When I say you don’t have to explain what you’re going to do with your life I’m not suggesting you lounge around whining about how difficult it is. I’m suggesting you apply yourself with some serious motherfuck-i-tude in directions for which we have no accurate measurement. I’m talking about work. And love.

You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth.

Even now I simultaneously wonder if and hope that and also completely believe that what she says is true. That everything will be okay. That life is hard, but also more simple than we make it out to be. That there is much to live for and much to see and much to love, but the point is - have something to live for. Have something that you believe in. Have something that you will pursue relentlessly.

Don’t let anyone else change the things and thoughts that have been placed in your heart and etched into your soul. You have been made to believe in and yearn for whatever particular thing that you alone love for a reason. There’s so much you can do with that that nobody else can. So go on and give it all you’ve got.