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One thing I feel clear about is that it’s important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven’t really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won’t look back upon my forties with regret.

Irvin D. Yalom

Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Alternate Between Footprint Marvel Mountain Now Sob Think Together Torrential
Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Death Form Mode Number Other Primary Specialties Take Transcendence
To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Acute Best Every Experience Impatient Knowledge Offer Some Therapy
Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Box Compassionate Enter Life Maner More Pandora Re Richer
This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Awareness Began Brought Come Confrontation Death Due Existential Experience Increase Preciousness Think
And if you do the latter, you’re not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Concern Day Every Example Latter Life Pretty Privacy Security Trivialities Worry
The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient’s control over every interaction.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Allow Each Emphasize Group InterAction Limit Patient Safer Set Therapist
The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Creative Discipline Member Orthodoxy Outgrow Ultimate
If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Cease Climb Enough Height Loo Reach Tragedy Tragic We
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Before Birth Darkness Death Identical Life Spark Void
Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Dignity Else Emerence Everything Government Highest More Protection Religion Revelation
I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Also Day Decade Distant Feel Future Himself Man One Psychiatrist Spent Strongly
The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Both Decision Domain Finiteness Groundlessness Hard Lead Path Soak Territory
Were not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Important Pathology People Relationship Student Teach Work
Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns–fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns–seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Away Concern Cure Dear Death Interpersonal Meet Neurotic Psychoneurious Rejection Seem Sense
I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Against Believe Cheer Comfort Illusion Magic Quarry Think Though
Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Decide Life Miserable Spend Think
One thing I feel clear about is that it’s important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven’t really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won’t look back upon my forties with regret.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Clear Feel Important Lety Live One Thing
It’s not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It’s like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death’s terror.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Aware Death East Every Face Moment Much Not Only Stand Stare Sun Terror Try
Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Accident Existence Let Life Plan Possession
Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Choose Every Must Person Stand Truth
Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Alway Death Does Door However Inner Itch Scratch Some Time
When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?
IRVIN D. YALOM

Cluster Dead Death Living Memory Person Truly Vanish Wonder
All these things I’ve written so much about. That’s why I’ve made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Almost Come Everybody More Practice Revelation Seen Self Show Some Therapy Want Write Yourself
Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Defense Despite Most Staunch Venerable
…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Creator Death Life Money Unlive
… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Better Give Hope Later Past Sooner

One thing I feel clear about is that it’s important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven’t really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won’t look back upon my forties with regret.

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One thing I feel clear about is that it’s important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven’t really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won’t look back upon my forties with regret.

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