To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love. (157)
And, selfish and scared, I wonder how much more he has to give.
Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
Dahling, when God put teeth in your mouth, he ruined a perfectly good arsehole.
Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.
In a world where people die every day, I think the important thing to remember is that for each moment of sorrow we get when people leave this world there's a corresponding moment of joy when a new baby comes into this world. That first wail is-well, it's magic, isn't it? Perhaps it's a hard thing to say, but joy and sorrow are like milk and cookies. That's how well they go together. I think we should all take a moment to meditate on that.
I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled.
Even the two times that I left, I never really felt like I left the band. It's very bizarre. It's like there's sort of an umbilical cord that stretches between us spiritually.
As I mentioned, things were particularly hard during the Depression. My paternal grandfather was frequently out of work, and the family was evicted from their home.
Seekers are all following some distant star, and eventually will come to recognize that this star resides in their very core.
It's not a question of getting the opportunities, it's a question of noticing that opportunities are there.