“We need to look back sometimes and realize the past taught us to appreciate our future.”

“we need a mass of ancestors at our backs as ballast. Sometimes, we feel it's impossible to push into the future without such a weight behind us, without such heaviness to keep us steady, even if it is imaginary. And the more frightening the future is, the more complicated it seems to be, the more we steady ourselves with the past.”

“Our ability to look back on the past, our need or desire to make sense of it, is both a blessing and a curse; and our inability to see into the future with any degree of accuracy is, simultaneously, the thing that saves us and the thing that condemns us.”

“Sometimes in order to appreciate your future, you must remember the past.”

“Gratitude brings a peace that helps us overcome the pain of adversity and failure. Gratitude on a daily basis means we express appreciation for what we have now without qualification for what we had in the past or desire in the future. A recognition of and appreciation for our gifts and talents which have been given also allows us to acknowledge the need for help and assistance from the gifts and talents possessed by others.”

“We all are bound to those around us by glue, and to our pasts, and sometimes we need to dissolve it... They say you need to pull all the pieces apart and stand back to see how they fit together. Deconstruction. But what if then they can’t be put back together?”