Lionel Fisher

Regrets are particularly poignant for the old, those of us who have used up most of the chances we'll ever get and are left to make peace with our failed choices. Most things distance themselves with space and time to eventually slide off the edge of our consciousness, but not regrets. You can shove them aside, disavow them for a lifetime, but they always return. And the longer you deny them, the more they punish you when they can no longer be held at bay.

Vanishing cream for the mind, English writer Jeremiah Creedon calls it.It's beholding the mote in your brother's eye, says the Bible, while disregarding the beam in your own.Denial is refusing to listen to the voice that awakens you in the night and whispers, "You know, you really are an incredible jerk and you ought to do something abou

At the beach, fifty years later, the old man understands finally that much of what he disavowed in himself before recognizing its irretrievable value, most of the heartache he caused himself and those who chose to love him, came out of that repudiation of his true self.Such is the power of denial, the old man now realizes: a comforting ally in our struggles for survival, a fierce foe in our quest for ourselves. Denial finds us when we feel most alone, and only alone can we banish this demon that bars the long way home.

When was the last time someone was so overjoyed to see you, so brimming with love and affection that they literally ran to greet you? A dog will do that for you--ten, twenty, thirty times a day.

Why can't we say 'When!' about money the way we say 'When!' about coffee?

Such an incredible, stupefying realization: I am not, indeed, the center of the universe.Not! Not! Not!And the overwhelming gratitude, the flooding relief that comes from finally being able to give myself the permission to lay down that excruciating, exhausting burden of needing to prove to the world, every waking moment, that I am, indeed, undeniably, irrefutably The Center of the Universe.

People who need people are threatened by people who don__. The idea of seeking contentment alone is heretical, for society steadfastly decrees that our completeness lies in others.

In the 1991 movie City Slickers, Jack Palance gives Billy Crystal some profoundly simple advice. When Crystal asks him the secret of life, Palance holds up a forefinger, answers with a single word: "One."Choose one thing. Do it to the best of your ability. Let it go. Pick something else. Repeat endlessly.

I was always a stranger at home, in all the places I ever lived.

Think back. How many of your sweetest dreams, your greatest hopes, your most cherished desires have come true?On the other hand, how much of what you didn't really care about wound up happening anyway?What you have to understand is that it's the god of solitude who also happens to be in charge of denying us what we desperately want.She does it because she believes the more we get what we desperately want, the more miserable we become, even more so than we already are.As Truman Capote put it, "More tears are shed for answered prayers than unanswered