"We experience all sorts of “lasts” without necessarily recognizing it in the moment. We forget, swept up in the next chapter of our lives. And while some things are meant to be fleeting, others we aren’t so quick to let go of. And that is how you know what’s really important to you." — Jen Gurecki Prison, birthing children, and cancer, Redefining Radical
"Our stories are built from bits and pieces, broken fragments we string together, determined by chance and choice, accident and intent—sudden bursts of understanding that illuminate the truth of who we are." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"It’s strange how we miss things the most just as they’re about to end." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"Breathing is the first thing we are given and the last thing that’s going to leave." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"I marvel at how quickly unfamiliar experiences transform into mundane reality." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"The words that really matter in the wake of passing are the stories we tell of our loved ones. Stories fill up the space they leave behind and we can see their faces and hear their laugh and reach into something shapeless and touch them. So long as we tell stories, they can never really die." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"[ironically] Do what you love, but stay on the assembly line. There’s no time to find what you love, you should be building your credit score. Take risks, but don’t be foolish. Believe in yourself, but only if you’ve proven you should...Don’t embarrass yourself. Don’t waste time at a job you hate, but magically manifest money to leave that job and chase a dream. Got it? Perfect." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"This, I believe, is why time moves so slowly as a child – why school days creep by and summer breaks stretch on. Your brain is paying attention to every second. It must as it learns the patterns of living. Every second has value. But as you get older, and the patterns become more obvious, time speeds up. Especially once you find your groove in the working world. The layout of your days becomes predictable, a routine, and once your brain reliably knows what’s next, it reclines and closes its eyes. Time pours through your hands like sand." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"The life before had happened to me as childhood happens to everyone. The mark of adulthood is when we happen to life. Thirty years old. I was now an adult, with or without my consent, and adults are responsible for their lives. I wasn’t going to become someone I didn’t choose to be." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"The carefree timelessness of my youth was rattled in my twenties. A kind of panic set in. Time became visible. Each choice I made began to feel more and more final, as if every choice was the death of all the others. Millions of doors were locking behind me as I passed them in the hallway. I felt that age thirty – adulthood – was coming like winter. Am I missing out? Am I making the right decisions? Am I becoming the person I want to be? It often dawns too late that we have only one life, only one path, and the choices we make become the story line of our lives." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"Was I the person, the climber, that I believed I had been? Those events shaped who I was, and now they were receding into the distance." — Chris Jones Climbing Fitz Roy, 1968
"There are a few vestiges of my high school years who I paid visits to here and there throughout college, or bump into now and again on social media. It’s a part of my life I no longer identify with. Somewhere that, if I ever did return to, I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable in my skin. It’s not that I’m ashamed, or that I don’t cherish the memories, it’s something else. What, I don’t know. For reasons I can’t dimly begin to understand, those disaffected years when I was skating are some of the most nostalgic in my life. They bear no more proximity to my current values and lifestyle...But I don’t want to ruin it by trying to understand it." — Chris Kalman Newsletter
"What’s the point of being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes?" — 4th Doctor Doctor Who, "Robot"
"When you’re a kid, they tell you it’s all… Grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid, and that’s it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It’s so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better." — Elton Pope Doctor Who, "Love and Monsters"
"[Age] is in your head. It’s whatever you believe. You know, my parents were old when they were in their 40s; that’s the way they thought. The way they acted. It was their assumptions about life. I’m not like that; I think you can talk yourself into anything. Age is just a number, as long as your body is willing. Age is meaningless." — Dierdre Wolownick (Alex Honnold's mom) Adventure Journal
"The trick is to die young as late as possible." — Wolf Bauer via Lowell Skoog Written in the Snows
"This present moment / that lives on / to become / long ago." — Gary Snyder This Present Moment, “Go Now”
"...how quickly our moment together had already become a memory." — James Campbell Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild
"This is what our life is like; full of joy, full of sadness, full of longing, full of success, and of bitter disappointments. So full of happiness and suffering at the same time, that sometimes there is just too much of everything. It is then that we grow old." — Nejc Zaplotnik, translated by Mimi Marinsek Alpinist Magazine, Issue 74, "Nejc Zaplotnik, Mountain Poet"
