%% ID: 13204967 Updated: 2022-01-28 %% ![](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article2.74d541386bbf.png) # About Title: [[Other/Obsidian Starter Vault(Second Brain)/Readwise 1/Articles/What I’ve Learned Since Taking a Raft From Africa to Europe to Find a Better Life]] Author: [[George Blue Kelly]] Category: #articles Number of Highlights: ==31== Last Highlighted: *2021-11-23* Readwise URL: https://readwise.io/bookreview/13204967 Source URL: https://medium.com/simple-pub/what-ive-learned-since-taking-a-raft-from-africa-to-europe-to-find-a-better-life-755bd7ce9fbf # Highlights It’s a scary feeling. Knowing that nothing’s working. Knowing full well you’re wasting your life. ^278320323 --- But it’s not only the sea that kills. It’s also the desert. The Sahara is not a nice place to be. ^278320324 --- Like all journeys, you need friends. People to learn on. People to draw hope from. People to gain courage from ^278320325 --- the desert holds a lot of untold stories. There are so many things that can happen to them with rape being the least. ^278320326 --- Him thinking other people may one day need something to try to keep warm. Him being the man he is. ^278320327 --- Get some skills, son!” ^278320328 --- He gave me one piece of advice before walking away — ^278320329 --- hadn’t yet learned that it’s better to be prepared and not have an opportunity than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. ^278320330 --- anytime can be six o’clock. ^278320331 --- It isn’t happiness that gives life meaning. ^278320332 --- wasn’t the pursuit of happiness that gave me the courage to finally step aboard. At that point, happiness was too weak. Almost none existence. It was something deeper that propelled me forward ^278320333 --- Until we find what goes deeper than happiness, we’ll never explore and reach the depth of what we are truly capable of doing and ^278320334 --- It’s a weird feeling to know that either decision could result in death. I could die going back or I could die moving ahead. ^278320335 --- what brought him to this place? ^278320336 --- “When life can no longer threaten you with death, what else is there?” ^278320337 --- If you lack purpose, you’ll go in circles ^278320338 --- conversing a lot about nothing ^278320339 --- The older I get, the more these things bore me. “I’m getting tired of social media,” I often say to my friends whenever they press me on my lack of enthusiasm in chats. I’d rather have a 60-second call than a 60-minute chat or Facebook scrolling. ^278320340 --- If you wake up in the morning, with no sense of purpose or direction, you’re most likely to end up recycling your unproductive habits. Purpose, the cure to life’s greatest pandemic, ‘wasted lives ^278320341 --- friends that are going nowhere want us to go with them. ^278320342 --- We become quick to notice our mistakes and wrong habits when we have a target we are trying to hit. ^278320343 --- I acknowledge, however, that it was the desire to give my life meaning that forced me to leave home. As we like to say —“We left home to feed home.” ^278320344 --- What he means is, at any given time, we operate out of certain sets of knowledge. ^278320345 --- And if we do not know better, how can we act any better? ^278320346 --- “If you take a pig to America, it is still a pig.” ^278320347 --- Success and happiness are not in some faraway land. They are in every place. It takes knowledge, discipline, and consistency to make one’s life worthy of living. Tell me where in the world, these basic needs of success aren’t applicable? ^278320348 --- What I truly needed was not to cross the desert and sail the sea but rather to expand my mind. ^278320349 --- and sail the sea but rather to expand my mind. Acquire a new skill. Be focused. Put my back into everything I do. Set goals and live each day like it was my last. These are the secrets to which I seek. They’ve been breathing inside me this whole time but I didn’t have the courage to look for them. ^278320350 --- we all have stories to tell. But stories are worthless if we fail to pick up the lessons those stories were meant to teach us. ^278320351 --- Whatever doesn’t kill you, will make you stronger.” I ^278320352 --- do not claim to know everything. That’s why I hold on closely to the words of Albert Einstein, that what we know is like a teaspoon and what we do not know is as big as the ocean. ^278320353