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When we honestly ask ourselves which people in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand … That is a friend who cares.

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you really need to do, in order to have what you want.

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life,
is that when you look for things in life like
love, meaning, motivation,
it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock.

The most successful people in life recognize, that in life
they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning,
they generate their own motivation.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies,
know more today about the world than I knew yesterday.

And lessen the suffering of others.
You’d be surprised how far that gets you.

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

We often think of illnesses being defined in a laboratory by scientists or in a clinic by doctors. But definitions of health and illness are also shaped by cultural milieus, social contexts, market forces, blind assumptions and even unconscious biases in ways that have profound implications for individuals and societies.