I begin to shed my Martha-like anxiety about many things. Washable slipcovers, faded and old — I hardly see them; I don’t worry about the impression … - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I don’t worry about the impression they make on other people. I am shedding pride.

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand, only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back — it does not matter which because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it.

The joy of such a pattern is...the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined. One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes... But how does one learn this technique of the dance? Why is it so difficult? What makes us hesitate and stumble? It is fear, I think, that makes one cling nostalgically to the last moment or clutch greedily toward the next. [And fear] can only be exorcised by its opposite: love.

"And so I miss the fertilization that might come from a contact. And for me — yes, I think I might as well admit it — fertilization does come a great deal from contacts. Why then do I avoid them — in a sort of false pride — shyness — timorous modesty? I used to be afraid of falling in love with people — or having them think I was — that I was chasing them (how ridiculous — I am actually always running away!) but now surely — I should be mature enough to be over that. I am no longer afraid of falling in love, and the other false modesties should vanish. I cannot bear to think "par delicatesse j'ai perdu ma vie." (Because of discretion I have lost my life)."

Lost time was like a run in a stocking. It always got worse.