Patrick

“What I will remember forever is that no one said a word. I am still amazed at the profoundness that can echo in silence. Each person, including newer boyfriends who I knew less well, gave me a reaffirming hug in turn and headed back to their seats. No one lingered or awkwardly tried to validate my grief. They were there for me, just for a moment, and it was exactly what I needed.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“A true patriot salutes the flag but always makes sure it’s flying over a nation that’s not only free but fair, not only strong but just.”
― Jon Meacham, Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation

“Sharp, incisive, clever thinking is steadily becoming a lost art, more and more the domain of specialists and gurus. The trend is troubling and raises the question, Is America losing its ability to think? If, for argument’s sake, we define thinking as the use of knowledge and reasoning to solve problems and plan and produce favorable outcomes, the answer is, apparently, yes.”
― Michael R. LeGault, Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can't Be Made in the Blink of an Eye

“In the 1980s and 1990s, psychologists finally coined a term for what the traumatologist Charles Finely called “the cost of caring”: compassion fatigue. It’s a complex of symptoms including exhaustion, irritability, and anger resulting from caring for others who are afflicted by fear and suffering. Also known as “secondhand shock,” compassion fatigue is the bane of wildlife rehabilitators and veterinarians—as well as doctors and nurses coping with emergencies like battlefields, natural disasters, and pandemics. Compassion fatigue can exact a terrible physical toll—including headache, sleeplessness, weight loss, and chronic exhaustion—but worst of all is what Carla Joinson first noted was happening to her overextended fellow nurses: losing their “ability to nurture.”
― Sy Montgomery, Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell