Emilee Tancak

“People on the second mountain have made strong commitments to one or all of these four things: A vocation A spouse and family A philosophy or faith A community”
― David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

“That’s the crucial way to tell whether you are on your first or second mountain. Where is your ultimate appeal? To self, or to something outside of self?”
― David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

“If you listen, I’ll tell you a story. We can know and be known to each other, and then we’re not enemies anymore.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Therapists talk a lot about how the past informs the present—how our histories affect the ways we think, feel, and behave and how at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past. If we don’t accept the notion that there’s no redo, much as we try to get our parents or siblings or partners to fix what happened years ago, our pasts will keep us stuck. Changing our relationship to the past is a staple of therapy. But we talk far less about how our relationship to the future informs the present too. Our notion of the future can be just as powerful a roadblock to change as our notion of the past.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed