one small thing I've learned these years, how to be alone, and at the edge of aloneness how to be found by the world. - David Whyte

The summation of a person’s life is the sum of what they held in their affections. This natural gravity field, this natural gravity well of belonging, which finds a particular coloration according to the way we’re made, is the secret keep to compassion.

The antidote to exhaustion is not rest; it's wholeheartedness.

The pursuit of the self is the pursuit of that part of us not defined by our worries and anxieties. But this pursuit begins only by admitting that human anxiety is endless and to be expected. These waves of existential anxiety may knock down the surface self, but there is another, deeper self with a larger perspective that was never knocked down at all. The pursuit of the self is the pursuit of this non-self, one large enough to hold the necessary losses of a human life.