The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOMNever take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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None of my patients are really troubled by the idea that some part of what they say might be in a book in the future.
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Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door.
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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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A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche’s message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
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He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)
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A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man acts honestly, not deceptively.
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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown.
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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.
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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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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.
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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.
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
IRVIN D. YALOM