Inner peace is more a question of cultivating perspective, meaning, and wisdom even as life touches you with its pain. - Rachel Naomi Remen

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.

We may need to take our labels and our experts far more lightly. Some years ago...[I heard of] a farmer who had done exceptionally well despite a dire prognosis. He had taken the same attitude toward his physician's prognosis that he took toward the words of the government soil experts who analyzed his fields. As they were educated men, he respected them and listened carefully as they showed him the findings of their tests and told him that the corn would not grow in this field. He valued their opinions. But, as he said, 'A lot of the time, the corn grows anyway.' What would it be like if more people allowed for the presence of the unknown, and accepted the words of experts in this same way?

Like a diagnosis, a label is an attempt to assert control and manage uncertainty. It may allow us the security and comfort of a mental closure and encourage us not to think about things again. But life never comes to a closure, life is process, even mystery. Life is known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with change and the unknown. Given the nature of life, there may be no security, but only adventure.

Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.