Jane Ha

“Being present builds a child’s confidence because it lets the child know that she is worth thinking about. Without this, a child might come to believe that her activity is just a means to gain praise, rather than an end in itself. How can we expect a child to be attentive, if we’ve not been attentive to her? Being present, whether with children, with friends, or even with oneself, is always hard work. But isn’t this attentiveness – the feeling that someone is trying to think about us – something we want more than praise?”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done?”
― Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

“What did I do? I lived. Living builds character. It shapes us into who we are going to become.”
― Tabitha Brown, Feeding the Soul (Because It's My Business): Finding Our Way to Joy, Love and Freedom—A Vegan Cookbook and Inspirational Guide by Tabitha Brown

“At one time or another, we all try to silence painful emotions. But when we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us, and why.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves