I’m a quote-aholic. I can’t help but think when I hear something poignant, that the universe must be talking to me.

Take, for instance, this afternoon. It’s just another cold winter’s day on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I’m trying to learn how to relax, which has never been part of my nature. So after spending most of the morning running around, going to the park with Bella, etc., etc., I force myself to sit and watch a movie mindlessly, but instead, start to write this blog. Far be it from me to sit and do nothing. 🙂

The movie is one of seen a number of times…“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” It is about a group of older people who travel to India to live out the rest of what’s left of their lives. Each has a story of growing older, feeling useless in retirement, feeling unlovable through divorce, feeling tossed aside, washed out, used up. They’re hoping that India will be a place for them to make a new life with what’s left of theirs.

The movie is chock full of quotes, life lessons and the stuff that makes you rethink everything you’re doing in your own life. I am impacted again and again throughout the two hours of a movie so beautiful and idealistic that I want to cry.

And so, I’d like to share these treasures with you:

• Can we be blamed because we feel like we’re too old too change? Too scared of disappointment to start it all again?
• We must get up in the morning and do our best. Nothing else matters.
• Nothing happens unless we first dream.
• There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. Only a present that builds and creates itself as the past withdraws.
• The only real failure is the failure to try.
• He who risks nothing; does nothing; has nothing. What you could have done should have been more than nothing.
• Don’t you know that you can have anything you want? You just have to stop waiting for someone to tell you that you deserve it.
• Initially you’re overwhelmed, but gradually you realize it’s like a wave. Resist and you’ll be knocked over. Dive into it, and you’ll swim out the other side.
• The measure of success is how we deal with disappointment.
• Your future will be different. Your fear is that it will be the same.
• What’s the use of a marriage when nothing is shared?
• Most things don’t work out. But sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff.
• I know you’re off you game…lost your footing…lost your confidence maybe. But you are a thorobred. You’ll be back.
• When someone dies, you think about your own life. And I don’t want to grow older. I don’t want to be condescended to. To become marginalized and ignored by society. I don’t want to be the first person they let off the plane in a hostage crisis.
• Don’t just cope…thrive.
• If I can stand on my own two feet, so can you.
• Prepare to be amazed. Take my offer of a vision of the future.
• Celebrate change.

And my favorite:

• Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, then it’s not yet the end.

Take just one quote (or all of them!) to heart and let it/them settle in and take root as you journey through this labyrinth called life. All will be well in the end.