But,instead of what our imagination makes us suppose and which we worthless try to discover,life gives us something that we could hardly imagine.

The life we receive is not always what we choose.

It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

We do not ask life what the meaning of life is. Life asks us, what is the meaning of your life. And life demands our answer.

Life is not what is promised, But what is sought. These bones, not what is found, But what we’ve fought. Our truth, not what we said, But what we thought. Our lesson, all we have taken & all we have brought.

... I discovered life sometimes has a way of giving you what you need, but not in the form you expect.

Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options

Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown -even when we don't want to and when we think we don't need to.

Life is largely a matter of expectation.

But one doesn't expect out of life what one has already learned that it cannot give, but rather one begins to see more and more clearly that life is only a kind of sowing time, and the harvest is not here.

What if the point of life has nothing to do with the creation of an ever-expanding region of control? What if the point is not to keep at bay all those people, beings, objects and emotions that we so needlessly fear? What if the point instead is to let go of that control? What if the point of life, the primary reason for existence, is to lie naked with your lover in a shady grove of trees? What if the point is to taste each other's sweat and feel the delicate pressure of finger on chest, thigh on thigh, lip on cheek? What if the point is to stop, then, in your slow movements together, and listen to the birdsong, to watch the dragonflies hover, to look at your lover's face, then up at the undersides of leaves moving together in the breeze? What if the point is to invite these others into your movement, to bring trees, wind, grass, dragonflies into your family and in so doing abandon any attempt to control them? What if the point all along has been to get along, to relate, to experience things on their own terms? What if the point is to feel joy when joyous, love when loving, anger when angry, thoughtful when full of thought? What if the point from the beginning has been to simply be?

The crux of the curious difficulty lies in the fact that our conscious views of what life ought to be seldom correspond to what life really is.

Life is incredibly contingent and unexpected.

The essence of life is that it’s challenging.