Patrick Page

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not. Epictetus,”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“The moment you get strongly identified, you lose your perspective on life! Ideas of good and bad, right and wrong are all your mental constructs. They have nothing to do with life as such. What was considered to be moral a hundred years ago is intolerable today. What you think is very good, your children despise. Your ideas of good and bad are just a certain level of prejudice against life. The moment you get identified with your limited ideas of morality you become completely twisted. Your intellect functions around these identifications in such a way that you never see the world as it is. If you want an element of spirituality to enter your life, the first thing you must do is drop these rigid ideas of virtue and vice, and learn to look at life just the way it is. One of the biggest problems in the world today is that right from a person’s childhood, an inflexible system of morality has been imposed on the mind. Whatever you consider good, you naturally get identified with it. Whatever you consider bad, you are naturally repelled by. This attraction and aversion is the basis of all strong identification. The nature of your mind is that whatever you are averse to dominates it. Moralists and preachers have for generations told humanity to eschew “evil thoughts.” That is a surefire strategy to achieve the reverse! Now, if you try to resist that supposedly “evil thought,” it becomes a full-time job. There is nothing else going on in your head. The idea of moral superiority has been the source of too many inhuman acts to be ignored. Most people who believe they are virtuous are hard to live with. Besides, they spend most of their lives trying to avoid what they consider “wrong” or “sinful.” That usually means they are constantly thinking about it. Avoiding something is not freedom from it. Such morality is based on exclusion. Spirituality, on the other hand, is born of inclusion”
― Sadhguru, Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

“To her credit, my wife will not allow me to get away with pinning the entire blame for my arrivals-gate hissy fit on Nazis and fascists and infant trauma. Yes, the backstory merits compassion and understanding—and she has given me an abundance of both—but there comes a point when “Hitler made me do it” won’t fly. Responsibility can and must be taken.”
― Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

“Attention is your most precious asset, and deciding how to invest it is one of the most important decisions you can make. The good news is you can make that decision now, in this moment, and in each moment of your life.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness