We cannot make another person change his or her steps to an old dance, but if we change our own steps, the dance no longer can continue in the same predictable pattern.
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God has entrusted me with myself.
Epictetus (50–135 CE) was a Greek Stoic philosopher who believed that philosophy was a way of life and not just a theoretical discipline. He taught that all external events are beyond one’s control, and thus one should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. In addition, Epictetus believed in individual responsibility for one’s actions through rigorous self-discipline.
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Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.
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We meet no ordinary people in our lives.
Stay a verb—don’t become a noun.
Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will.
3
Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.
I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.
1
Empathetic listening is an awesome medication for the hurting heart.
If you bring forth what is within you it will save you. If you do not, it will destroy you.
If only our passion to understand others were as great as our passion to be understood. Were this so, all our apologies would be truly meaningful and healing.
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