The purpose of relationship is to create an opportunity, not an obligation—an opportunity for growth, for full self expression and for healing every false thought or small idea you ever had about you.
Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively. After a short time, a very short time, there would be little that one really enjoyed. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.
Keeping your word, being kind to others and nurturing relationships is everything in the long run.
100 years from now, you, everybody you know, everything you did or thought about or thought about doing, will be dead and forgotten.
It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings.
Proudly admit you don’t understand some things.
People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.
