The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living

by Dalai Lama XIV

Our relationship may no longer be based on intense passion, the view of the other as the embodiment of perfection, or the feeling that we are merged with the other. But in exchange for that, we are now in a position to truly begin to know the other. To see the other as a separate individual, with faults and weaknesses perhaps, but a human being like ourselves. It is only at this point that we can make a genuine commitment, a commitment to the growth of another human being – an act of true love.

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The ability to shift perspective can be one of the most powerful and effective tools we have to help us cope with life’s daily problems.

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If you focus too closely, too intensely, on a problem when it occurs, it appears uncontrollable. But if you compare that event with some other greater event, look at the same problem from a distance, then it appears smaller and less overwhelming.’

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Yet it is the very act of struggling against the resistance that ultimately results in our strength.

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