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Reticence is a natural state. It is not hiding. People don’t show themselves equally and easily to all. Reticence doesn’t make one feel lonely as hiding does, yet it distances and invalidates others.
“A glimpse into the depth of other people’s misfortunes makes us cling to the hope that suffering is measurable. There are more sorrowful sorrows, more despondent despondencies. When we recognize another’s suffering, we cannot avoid confronting our own, from which we escape to the thought of measurability. Well, at least, we emphasize. Our capacity to console extends only to what we can do to console ourselves.”
― Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
― Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
“they were blessed with an especially large dose of common sense. Whatever the case, they have more answers inside themselves than others do. Similarly, some people are more humble and open-minded than others. Humility can be even more valuable than having good mental maps if it leads you to seek out better answers than you could come up with on your own. Having both open-mindedness and good mental maps is most powerful of all.”
― Principles: Life and Work
― Principles: Life and Work
“A dreamer: it’s the last thing I want to be called, in China or in America. No doubt when my friend in Beijing used the term, she was thinking of traits like persistence, single-mindedness, willfulness, and—particularly—impracticality, which she must have seen plenty of in me. Still, that one possesses a dreamer’s personality and that one has dreams do not guarantee that one knows how to dream.”
― Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
― Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
“and left. When the three children died in the same year she remained indifferent to Nikolai’s loss. Worse than enduring a tyrannical parent is to be the favored child.”
― Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
― Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
“In my own life, what I want to give to people, most importantly to people I love, is the power to deal with reality to get what they want. In pursuit of my goal to give them strength, I will often deny them what they “want” because that will give them the opportunity to struggle so that they can develop the strength to get what they want on their own. This can be difficult for people emotionally, even if they understand intellectually that having difficulties is the exercise they need to grow strong and that just giving them what they want will weaken them and ultimately lead to them needing more help.23 Of course most people would prefer not to have weaknesses.”
― Principles: Life and Work
― Principles: Life and Work
Xi Guo’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Xi Guo’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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