Rebecca’s Reviews > Adaptation to Life > Status Update

"The unloved often have a special capacity to identify and to empathize with the pain and suffering in the world."

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love, to put its trust in life. - Joseph Conrad, Victory

A third man sums up his secret to late midlife digity succinctly, "You discover that your experiences and whatever sense you have gathered in the course of your life are *needed*."

We cannot be taught self-esteem; we absorb it.

LOL!
Excerpt from a Grant Study questionnaire:
Separation or divorce has been considered? Never, Casually Seriously?
The multiple choice answers were ignored and replaced by a message written boldly in black ink: WE'VE NEVER THOUGHT OF DIVORCE. BUT MURDER? YES!!!

I love that seemingly many of the participants of the study really appreciated it. "As a rule, I have always written a little more than the questionnaire asked for, largely because of my gratitude toward the Study for helping me understand myself."

"First, it is not the isolated traumas of childhood that shape our future, but the quality of sustained relationships with important people. Second, lives change and the course of life is filled with discontinuities."
Reading about the subjects in this study is pretty interesting.

The conclusion to which the assessment study has come is that psychopathology is always with us and soundness is a way of reacting to problems, not an absence of them. - Frank Barron
Okay, so maybe I'm just going to be skimming this book. lol