The beauty of the past, all memories turned to
gold by time, is a pointer to the future.

The history of your life is like beads on a string,
In each reflected: the untold glory of heaven.

Such heavy shifting

One life is full of treasures : what memories are in your heart?

Peer through them
and pray to see further beyond.

Look

with your whole life
and you will see depth beyond all depth ; a height above all height.

The heart of God beats like an earthquake. Momentous and titanic. Dense and invisible.

I yearn for this above all things
(these sideways glimpses of eternity)

I am floored. I am on my knees.

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It’s a simple thing. Stick with the truth. Then you’ll always be right. Not because you’re right, but because the truth is right. It’s the key to nearly everything.

Never be too proud to admit the truth, even if it’s only to yourself. Whisper it quietly, when there’s no-one else around, if that’s what you have to do.

Crazy, beautiful design.

Did I say that already? Can’t remember, and can’t be bothered to check my archives …

It can be magazine articles, fashion, web sites, posters, fonts, home decor.

I love quirky or odd things that are done with real artistry and a sense of style. It’s pointless just doing something “to be different” but when you break the mould with panache and boldness, it comes off really well. You can transcend the ups and downs of fads — style never goes out of fashion. Just think, women are still wearing dresses with high waist-lines that come straight out of Jane Austen’s time.

It’s interesting, we only really hate the style that’s just gone out of fashion. Now we’re passed the 90s, everyone loves the 80s again. Ten years ago it would have looked passé. Now it looks really sharp. Isn’t that great? I love how “fickle” people are. It fuels so much creativity.

People with depression

There’s a lot of things in me that I’m not proud of, but one of my favourite bits of me is this growing sense of value I have for human beings.

I’ve just been visiting a site about depression. There are videos of people talking about their experiences the illness, and it suddenly made me angry and sad that these incredible people should be so broken down. It struck me how valuable those people were. They’re not famous, or great leaders in the business world, but there was something about their expressions that caught me.

I’ve struggled with what I would say was mild depression. I’ve never been diagnosed with it, and I’ve always been able to manage it and come out of “episodes”, but I would still call it depression. I think giving it a name helps. It gives you dignity and self-respect. Fighting depression is a noble task. Knowing that you’re fighting something big is like a little piece of daytime that you can hold onto when all the lights go out.

Everyone gets a bit down from time to time, and depression is like that, but more long term. You can wake up feeling empty and worthless, and then as the day goes on you fight it and the feeling lessens and you can feel quite good about life. You feel proud of yourself, hopeful about the future. And then the next day, all that progress is lost, and it’s like starting from square one.

Imagine doing that every morning for a couple of years, and you can see how discouraging and frustrating depression is. I write this to help people understand a bit more how depression is not just a character weakness, and is a real illness. It takes a heck of a lot of self-discipline just to not give up on life, and this needs to be encouraged and praised.

So that’s another couple of passions to add to the list. (Which, incidentally, I keep to provide me with anchor-points for when I lose my bearings — a good habit to get into.) Depressed people: you are valuable and of great worth, keep fighting, it’s worth it. Get all the help you need, because you can recover.

As you grow up you realise that some problems aren’t just going to go away. Some problems are quite big and threatening.

It’s now that faith really counts. To know that there’s someone looking out for you, who sees everything, knows what’s going on, knows how to sort it and bring something good and valuable out of it.

People criticise faith because they say it’s just a comfort blanket for people who can’t handle life. They’re so wrong. This is so much deeper than comfort. Faith puts you in painful sitautions. (Sometimes painful situations are required to sort out other painful situations.)

Faith isn’t just a thread of comfort that runs through my life, it’s more like a chain like the chains that those chain ferries use. Without my faith, my life loses its cohesion. With it, things have a focus, a destination.

And when the focus and destination disappear from view, at least you’ve got the gap where they were — that’s enough to give hope. Faith turns problems into fertile fields waiting to produce a harvest. Faith never allows you to have a victim mentality, it always enables you to trust that whatever you face has a meaning that goes beyond your own life and that it will be something that contributes towards your future. Faith shows me that the only option left to me is to take responsibility, it’s never a crutch that lets me cross my fingers and hope that the Bad Thing goes away.

I’m re-discovering typography. That is, fonts. I had forgotten how much I love type faces.

Typographica is a blog all about fonts. It’s literally the reading equivalent of wine-tasting!

Today I woke up to my housemate’s alarm, which happened to be opera. I noticed how the tune grabbed a hold of me, and I thought how music hadn’t affected me like that in a long time. I started thinking how I’m finding it really hard to be interested in things at the moment: things just seem really boring.

So, over breakfast, I decided that if I can’t make myself feel any better, I might as well try to brighten other people’s days. I’ve decided to make 5 people feel encouraged today.

And you know what? Life doesn’t look so bad any more.

Something I’m learning at the moment is that life is not all about accomplishing something. It’s vital to have dreams, but don’t think that just because you don’t see the dreams right now, that life isn’t happening. Life does not start when you finally get your dreams — it started when you were born!

Living with the thought that only when your dreams are here, will life start to mean something is a form of pessimism. It completely discounts the treasures around you right now.

Let’s imagine you want to become financially independent from your employer. What a great dream — finally you can stop working for money, and work because you love what you do, or because you know that you’re contributing something. Let’s say that there are six stages you need to go through before you get there. These stages might last a year each. If you see them as a hassle, “dead” time you have to trudge through before you get to your goal, you’ve just let six years of your life slide by.

You can also apply this retroactively. If you find yourself asking, ‘What have I done with my life?’ don’t be too quick to answer negatively. What about the people you’ve loved? Even loving one person is enough. A life can be turned around through a single sentence of encouragement. You just don’t know who sees you as a source of encouragement and inspiration. And it’s not just people “below” you (i.e. those not as far along the path as you). Leaders are inspired by their followers, as much as the dream they’re following. Leaders see followers and are amazed and moved that people value them enough to follow them.

So never look down your nose at where you are right now. You’re learning lessons. Remember, the summit is just a tiny part of the mountain you’re currently climbing.