I would rate the fact that I get to be alive a big beautiful 10. Satisfaction with myself - work in progress.
Interpretation
Embracing life with a positive attitude while acknowledging personal growth.
In this quote, Eve Ensler expresses a profound appreciation for life, rating her existence as a 'big beautiful 10', which highlights her happiness and gratitude. At the same time, she recognizes that personal satisfaction is an ongoing journey, suggesting that self-improvement and self-acceptance are key components of a fulfilling life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing life challenges.
Dancing insists we take up space, and though it has no set direction, we go there together. Dance is dangerous, joyous, sexual, holy, disruptive, and contagious and it breaks the rules. It can happen anywhere, at anytime, with anyone and everyone, and it's free. Dance joins us and pushes us to go further and that is why it's at the center of ONE BILLION RISING.
Before cancer, I was obviously disconnected. I had a tumor the size of a mango inside me and didn't do anything about it. It wasn't like I didn't know something was wrong.
It's a weird thing about the truth: It protects you. What really makes you vulnerable is when you're lying because you're going to get caught. When you tell the truth, there's a strange relief that comes.
Well, the tyranny of masculinity and the tyranny of patriarchy I think has been much more deadly to men than it has to women. It hasn’t killed our hearts. It’s killed men’s hearts. It’s silenced them, it’s cut them off.
Why are women immobile? Because so many feel like they’re waiting for someone to say, "You’re good, you’re pretty, I give you permission."
Security is elusive. It's impossible. We all die. We all get old. We all get sick. People leave us. People change us. Nothing is secure.
But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.
Have the depth of faith to regard everything as a source for creating happiness and value.
Happiness is a great power of holiness. Thus, kind words, by their power of producing happiness, have also a power of producing holiness, and so of winning men to God.
I'll never forget the blooming happiness that spread in me like the sun coming up when Lydia's obstetrician poked me awake: 'Congratulations... you have a fine son.'
Gratitude is the confidence in life itself... As gratitude grows it gives rise to joy. We experience the courage to rejoice in our own good fortune and in the good fortune of others... We can be joyful for people we love, for moments of goodness, for sunlight and trees, and for the very breath within our lungs. Like an innocent child, we can rejoice in life itself, in being alive.
But the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
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