Quotes By Author: Michael Brent Jones

“Strong is the man who can pull apart his own pride and hopelessness; courageous is the man who then reaches in, near his most vital inner workings to pull out the slivers and shards of mortality that have worked their way in.It’s not about determining the shade of grey the white paint in the bucket has become, but finding where the black paint is dripping from, and stopping it.”

“What love actually is, is the action on a spontaneous positive impulse or idea. Love is the third step in connection—the first step is kindness, which is an investment of emotion to reach out and motivate someone. The second step is social intelligence where we consider all the possible things we could do to make a situation more enjoyable in the short and long term. The last step is love, which is action. Once we get to the third step there is no reason to question it. If our intuition already took care of the first step and our intellect confirmed it, whether or not our action also benefits us, it doesn’t matter. In neither of the three steps, kindness, social intelligence or love should there be consideration for whether something also indirectly benefits us, because that is irrelevant, even if we might be criticized for it. Bartering is weighing possible criticism or praise into what good deeds we choose to do.”

“To be loved, we must love first, and to love first, we must love ourself, but to love ourselves we must try to love others first. It turns out, our failed first attempt to love, was really the only possible beginning of love. Like a baby learning to walk, any step no matter how awkward or unsuccessful is the first step towards walking. We’ve already started loving, and we are probably closer to doing it well than we think.Love is seeing an asset to life and supporting it. We can’t pick and choose what assets we want to see or recognize. This doesn’t mean whatever asset we happen to stumble into, that we have to invest all of our energy in it—it means simply that we allow ourselves to see assets where ever they are. Where we choice to invest our time and energy is up to us.”

“Love is not something we must try hard to do, love comes naturally, it is trusting that love is enough—That is the hard thing to do. It sounds simple, but even when the simple answer is right in front of us, since the feeling is complicated, we often pass up the right answer to look for a complicated answer to match it.In the 1300s somewhere between seventy-five and two-hundred million people died from the black plague, which was a bacteria carried by fleas. Fleas are not a new problem, and the cure has been widely known long before the 1300s. It was simply to shave your hair off, wear clothes made from something coarse like goat hair, and to cover your skin in ash. The fleas lay eggs that stick to our hair, and with the hair gone, there is nowhere for the eggs to stick. The ash has the chemical hydroxide, which is enough to make the skin unlivable for the fleas. Everyone knew that anyone with a shaved head and ash on their skin meant that they knew they had fleas. To avoid the shame, many people would rather put up with the fleas, as long as other people didn’t think they had them. Maybe the quote before Mark Twain coined his was, “It’s better to keep your hair and appear free from fleas than shave your head and remove all doubt.”Besides itching and inflammation, fleas were fine… sort of… that is, until those fleas got infected with the plague, and spread that deadly infection. Instead of shaving their heads, people tried any other thing, and about half of Europe died.We shouldn’t be embarrassed to be human, and we shouldn’t feel stupid that we’re embarrassed, we should just talk about it, and get over it. Feeling unworthy of connection just for being human is the emotional plague, and we won’t know what it means to be human until we talk to other humans and realize they are scared and confused and definitely not perfect either.”

“It is easy to enter every moment of a day so burdened down as we try to carry all of our hopes and fears for that day, that we miss the good in every moment. Every moment is worth investing a full moment in. How we approach every moment matters. Shakespeare said in Antony and Cleopatra, “Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have immortal longings in me.” Our innermost longing is not merely to survive, but to thrive, and we share that longing with everyone else. Connection comes most intimately from looking for that innermost longing in others and ourselves. Love says, as Jordan Peterson wrote, “I want the best, for what wants the best in you.” We ought to love ourselves and want the best for what wants the best in us. There is a longing inside to love without reserve or limits and allow ourselves to be loved with ultimate vulnerability.We are more than what we can hide behind a mask, and there is no reason we should try to hide it. We are not the chemical mess we feel like at times, we are amazing—we defy the law of the universe that says all things trend towards chaos and emptiness. Walt Whitman said, “I am not contained between my hat and my boots.” We are not contained between our fears and our past experiences either. We are born with awareness, imagination and will-power, and combined with any other awareness, imagination and will-power both will be increased; that is the value of connecting. What we are born with is all we have or need to give. You were born worthy of connection, don’t ever second guess it!Yes, it may be dangerous to open up and let people into our life, but it is fatal to attempt to keep people out. Choose love, choose to see the goodness in life unbiasedly wherever it may be, and choose to make life better for yourself and everyone, whether or not anyone else wants to help.It is very normal and understandable to want to feel heard, seen and appreciated; at some point however, we have to make the decision to say what most merits hearing, do what is most worth seeing, and give what is most worth appreciating, whether or not anyone sees, hears or appreciates it. There is a saying that “integrity is how you act when you think no one is looking.” I say that character is what we do despite all that would sway us otherwise, whether that be potential for fame or fear of insignificance.”No positive effort is so small that good things won’t come from it, so do it!”