I'm electric with vertigo, even though I'm on the ground, vertigo like I felt once when I stood on the edge of a high cliff in Arizona and looked straight down.
It seems that many of us have the goal of making other people conform to our desires and expectations, whether or not we would admit to such a thing. We see this especially in parents who get upset because their children don__ conform to their expectations, but instead follow a pattern of development that is unique and individual. We often use language with peers and colleagues that encourages them to change their ways of doing things to our ways of doing things: __ou should_ and __ou ought to_ are usually presented as advice, but in the end they really are about changing someone else__ ways of doing things. And we may offer this __dvice_ in a spirit of love and helpfulness, but we can be much more helpful when we help them to find their own ways of changing things. It can be incredibly freeing to spend an entire day not looking to try to change the behaviors, beliefs, or attitudes of other human beings. If we approach life in this way, we may learn much about the other people in our lives instead of trying to make them be like us.
Just for Today, The Expanded Edition
Quote Detail
It seems that many of us have the goal of making other people conform to our desires and expectations, whether or not we would admit to such a thing. We see this especially in parents who get upset because their children don__ conform to their expectations, but instead follow a pattern of development that is unique and individual. We often use language with peers and colleagues that encourages them to change their ways of doing things to our ways of doing things: __ou should_ and __ou ought to_ are usually presented as advice, but in the end they really are about changing someone else__ ways of doing things. And we may offer this __dvice_ in a spirit of love and helpfulness, but we can be much more helpful when we help them to find their own ways of changing things. It can be incredibly freeing to spend an entire day not looking to try to change the behaviors, beliefs, or attitudes of other human beings. If we approach life in this way, we may learn much about the other people in our lives instead of trying to make them be like us.
Quick Answer
What this quote page tells you
This canonical quote page keeps the full saying, the attributed author, any linked work, and the topic tags together so the quote can be cited from one stable URL.
Related Quotes
More quote cards from the same area
Is is as if life or reality itself has had it in mind all along to unravel the very design i have been trying all along to impose on it.
Now, however open a person manages to be, there is one possibility to which he remains as closed as ever: the possibility that when he uncovers his deepest anxieties he will find hidden inside them certain horrifying truths which his whole effort to control his life has been designed to keep repressed.
When we operate on the basis of the will to control, we are aware of only one kind of "evil": the failure of existence to conform to the plan we have for it.
What we work so hard to avoid is the shattering of our lives by horrors we know we will be helpless to control.
If life were a highway, I would still look for the footpath, for walking that, I would learn about us, enjoying the extra time to do so.