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If your ankle gets shattered, people ask to hear the story. If your life gets shattered, they don’t.
The two things we want to know when we’re in pain are that we’re not crazy to feel the way we do and that we have support. Acting like nothing significant is happening to people who look like us denies us all of that.”
We don't talk about to help others we talk about it to help ourselves
“American culture demands that the answer to the question ‘How are you?’11 is not just ‘Good.’ … We need to be ‘Awesome.’” Caruso adds, “There’s this relentless drive to mask the expression of our true underlying feelings.” Admitting that you’re having a rough time is “almost inappropriate.”
In Ireland : not too bad
“Let me not die while I am still alive.”
if people instead asked “How are you today?” it showed that they were aware that I was struggling to get through each day.
if I wanted others to be more open with me, I needed to be more open with them. I started responding more frankly. “I’m not fine, and it’s nice to be able to be honest about that with you.”
“I’m here if you ever want to talk. Like now. Or later. Or in the middle of the night. Whatever would help you.”
the Platinum Rule:6 treat others as they want to be treated. Take a cue from the person in distress and respond with understanding—or better yet, action.
the problem lies in the offer to “do anything.” He writes that “while well meaning, this gesture unintentionally shifts the obligation to the aggrieved.7 Instead of offering ‘anything,’ just do something.”
“Some things in life cannot be fixed.8 They can only be carried,”
Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said that life can only be understood backward but it must be lived forward.
“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.”
“How we spend our days,”8 author Annie Dillard writes, is “how we spend our lives.”
happiness is the joy you find on hundreds of forgettable Wednesdays.9
We can start by helping children develop four core beliefs: (1) they have some control over their lives; (2) they can learn from failure; (3) they matter as human beings; and (4) they have real strengths to rely on and share.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,1 tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. —martin luther king jr.
