One Life – Hedley

Life’s been keeping me very busy and I’ve been pushing and stretching myself in several areas. Each hurdle makes me nervous but I’m learning it’s much better to push forward. Most of the time the risks are more than worth it and I’m getting much better at being ok with my mistakes when they happen. I have such an excitement about my life now that wasn’t there before – mistakes and all!

If there is one main lesson I learned through my deconversion that I carry with me every day, it’s that I absolutely refuse to live my life in fear anymore! I realize looking back how much of my life was based on fear. Fear of making mistakes. Fear of letting people down. Fear of letting God down. Fear of sinning. Fear of not having things turn out. Fear of the unknown. Fear of hell. Fear of not measuring up. Fear of not being holy enough. Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear!

No more!

If it’s the last night in these streets
You’d be a fool to take a seat
You got one life, one life
Don’t stop; live it up

 

 

 

 

What Do Atheists Believe?

I really enjoyed this speech by Todd Stiefel at the Reason Rally. It’s worth 11 minutes of your time and you may even get inspired!

via io9

Quote #36

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

– Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel

via Atheist Quotes on Facebook

The Greatest Sin (Quote #35)

Yet think she must; she knew at last the number on the dreadful door of fantasy, the threshold to the escape that was no escape; she knew that for her the greatest sin now and in the future was to delude herself. It had been a long lesson but she had learned it. Either you think – or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

– My favourite passage from Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.