Quotes About Connection

There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.

What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.

That's the great thing about literature -- it makes the world less lonely.

I know it's hard. It's one of the hardest things there is, but you know we can't make people love us. It happens, or it doesn't.

Committing yourself is a way of finding out who you are. A man finds his identity by identifying. A man's identity is not best thought of as the way in which he is separated from his fellows but the way in which he is united with them.

The Buddhists think that, because we've all had infinite previous lives, we've all been each other's relatives. Therefore all of you, in the Buddhist view, in some previous life … have been my mother — for which I do apologize for the trouble I caused you.

Anger spoils relationships where there should be great reciprocity.

I would rather have eyes that cannot see; ears that cannot hear; lips that cannot speak, than a heart that cannot love.

Two pairs of steps, laid parallel on their sides at a distance

men come by, looking for her since she left." "Have you heard from her?" "Not directly, but one of the girls that used to work here heard from her. She said Chantal

The more they give up false security, the greater the opportunity they have for real security in genuine relationships built on honest choices and priorities. Only through breaking loose from bondage and fantasies of connection can we really be free to fulfill our human potentiality.

The primary fantasy of connection leads to a posture of pseudo-independence in the developing child—"I don't need anyone, I can take care of myself"—yet the irony is that the more the person relies on fantasy, the more helpless he or she becomes in the real world and the more he or she demands to be taken care of.

To people who were not seen or were misunderstood as children, the experience of being seen as a person can be very moving, tantamount to a spiritual experience.

HUNGER AND THE MYTH OF FAMILY LOVE

It is a major thesis of this book that the fantasy bond in the traditional family causes a tremendous amount of innocent, unnecessary suffering. Denying primitive hunger and pain and pretending connections that, in fact, do not exist, lead to fundamental distortions of each person's sense of reality. It is a great burden on everyone to play this game of "let's pretend.

Our embodied and relational minds are the source of our selves, serving to limit and liberate who we become. When any of a combination of challenges to our minds bombards our development, conflicts may arise that bring great suffering and stifle our sense of freedom and connection.

Because of the anxiety inherent in being vulnerable and undefended in a new love relationship, an individual unconsciously attempts to merge and form a unit with the loved one. In forming a bond, the lover is able to alleviate anxiety and attain a false sense of security and safety by sustaining the illusion of being fused. The fantasy of being connected functions as a defense, for whenever this bond is broken, the underlying pain and fear of separation invariably surface.

The main fact of life for me is love or its absence. Whether life is worth living depends for me on whether there is love in life. Without a sense of it, or even the memory…of it, I think I would lose heart completely. (p. vii)

The author sees resistance as the holding on to an imaginary connection to others, due to the dread of re-experiencing one's sense of aloneness and helplessness. Ultimately, resistance functions in order to protect the individual from experiencing anxiety states that arise from the threats to the neurotic resolution of the basic conflict—the conflict between dependency on inner fantasy for gratification versus a desire for real gratification in the interpersonal environment.

As we look around at people, what they're doing with their children, with each other, with their wives, with their husbands, we see that most of their behavior is directed toward maintaining illusions and bonds.

toward my children, but I know that was

Yea, I am one with all I see, With wind and wave, with pine and palm; Their very elements in me Are fused to make me what I am. Through me their common life-stream flows, And when I yield this human breath, In leaf and blossom, bud and rose, Live on I will…. There is no Death

There's sunshine in the heart of me, My blood sings in the breeze; The mountains are a part of me, I'm fellow to the trees. ~

Why are coffee people so nice?