What a shame to be so afraid of failure that you stop living. My wife has a great one-liner about failure: “Never consider yourself a failure-you can always serve as a bad example.” She is right. Failure can be a better teacher than success.
If you see what you do each day as your way of loving the world and helping it heal, then life gets to be a lot different. The difference between burning up and burning out is the difference between loving what you are doing and not loving it.
Not because I’m fascinated by the human body or want to understand death, but I like people and I want to help them. That also became my problem, because I couldn’t help everyone, I couldn’t fix everyone.
If I told patients to raise their blood levels of immune globulins or killer T cells, no one would know how. But if I can teach them to love themselves and others fully, the same changes happen automatically. The truth is: love heals.
You can find examples of how little we value ourselves everywhere you look. The signs on the front of the convenience stores where Stephen lives in Florida tell the story. Beer, ice, bread and milk are the big come-ons.
Do not be afraid to love. Remember dear old Don Quixote, viewing the world with love. He saw many beautiful things no one else saw. Try being dear Don Quixote for a day.
Who else do you admire, and exactly what do you admire about them? Have your roster of role models ready and waiting to help you the next time you are perplexed.
When you wake up and act like a loving person, you realize not only that you are altered, but that the people around you are also transformed, because everybody is changed by the reception of this love.
If our wholeness is interrupted, then our health suffers, and we need to find a way to restore our sense of meaning. When we move in the direction of that meaning, we’re healing.
In this view of the world, we spend the rest of our lives searching for wholeness and knowledge, wellness and health-the balance and harmony we lost when we were born.