#AtoZChallenge: Q is for Quote Challenge

Quotes are kind of like recycled words. Right?

Laura from the blog with the longest and coolest name ever – The Real Adventures of Becoming (Whatever This Thing is That I Am Presuming is the Authentic and Genuine) Me – nominated me for a quote challenge, around the turn of the century.

It’s about time to pay the piper.

Here’s how it works: I will share with you three quotes, and nominate three bloggers to do the same. I’ll go one better, and share a story with each one. Because I’m a notorious non-follower of rules (except when it comes to the speed limit).

I chose these quotes at random from the hundreds I’ve used at the bottom of posts.

What a quote to lead off.

I love that Gandhi chose to praise the ‘creator.’ This quote illustrates a commonality among religions, something so universal that it needs no specific name. A creator beyond our comprehension could have built all this?

In a world that challenges us and our faith daily, to recognize moments of wonder that defy mere science create a comfort in my soul that’s hard to explain.

It’s in watching my children play, and in smiling at a stranger. It’s in nature and in art and in many cases, it’s hard to distinguish between the two. The soulful expansion Gandhi speaks of allows for even more appreciation of the beauty.

Know that video of the kid who bursts into the room while her dad’s in the middle of the interview on CNN?

She’s my spirit animal! As toddlers, my kids often took the same tact – with a strut, a life-loving energy that we seem to lose over time. I want that back. I capture that at times, on days wearing long shorts and a baseball cap, with stormtroopers in my pockets.

I want to own my entry and go in full-hearted.

It’s also about the ultimate in mindfulness, not wishing you were elsewhere. It’s closing your laptop during a meeting, keeping your phone in your pocket during lunch. It’s modeling for my girls and my team that it’s time to seize the moment.

It’s also about loving those around us.

It’s a peace, a compassion, not just when we’re on the couch with our favorite shows and our favorite people, but in traffic. On a crowded sideline too close to the opponents’ parents. It’s leading with your heart, not your arse.

It’s also giving of ourselves.

It’s carrying your load and helping someone with theirs. It’s listening more than talking, understanding more than posturing. It’s knowing when you leave that spot that you left a piece of you, and took some of that place with you, too.

Admittedly, my area of opportunity is with feelings.

Hurt feelings are tough for me to deal with. It’s strange because I feel compassionate, empathetic. Concerned when people suffer. But I have a grave intolerance for hurt feelings. An expectation of toughness when it comes to the heart.

I do understand how words can become tools and elixirs and fuel, but also weapons.

It’s like when you hammer a nail into a board. You can remove the nail, but you can’t repair, really, the hole that it created. My biggest weakness for harmful words is those that tease and castigate.

“Mean and funny go hand in hand,” I’ve said to my girls before. Yeah.

And yes, it’s true, but I don’t mean it to become the means to an end, that to fire barbs and rips at people and places in the name of entertainment is any way to use words. I make fun of an awful lot, though.

And I see my kids do it.

See, this is one of those uncomfortable portions of writing. I’d rather concentrate on the positive influence of our words, whether in a comment on a blog or a post entirely. In complimenting a stranger or a loved one.

In writing or finding, the words that you struggled to express on your own.

This draws us to quotes, they’re utter recyclable qualities. They give us the chance to get right what we couldn’t get right on our own.

To discover an utterance spoken yesterday or eons ago and say, “yes. What she said.”

And that’s uber green, in a literary sense, if you ask me.

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By rule, this challenge should have taken place in three days, with a quote and a nominee to come each day. Here are three three I nominate:

Pat, of New Bloggy Cat

Caitlin, of The Working Explorer

Charlotte, of My Pixie Blog

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The rest of the A to Z to this point:

A is for Addiction to Devices

B is for Burgers (3 Lessons I learned During a Month Without Them) Plus 3 Random Smartphone Pics

C is for Interview with a Cat

D is for Do What I Do and Eat What I Eat

E is for Eight Things I’ve Left Behind

F is for  Foods That Bring Me Comfort

G is for #GirlsRock: An Interview Mental Health Care Advocate Kitt O’Malley

H is for Halfway There

I is for Ice Cream

J is for Justification for the Blog Life

K is for 7 Women I’d Sing Karaoke With

L is for Last 3 Blogs I Read (and Why You Should, Too)

M is for Men I Forgot to Be

N is for the New Plan

O is for One Day From Payday Spicy Chicken Skillet

P is for Too Many Projects, Not Enough Time (a Guest Post from Kathy of The Second Half of My Life)