“Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer’s day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented. “
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Oscar Wilde on Suffering
❝ BUT WHILE THERE WERE TIMES WHEN I REJOICED IN THE IDEA THAT MY SUFFERINGS WERE TO BE ENDLESS, I COULD NOT BEAR THEM TO BE WITHOUT MEANING. NOW I FIND HIDDEN SOMEWHERE AWAY IN MY NATURE SOMETHING THAT TELLS ME THAT NOTHING IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS MEANINGLESS, AND SUFFERING LEAST OF ALL. THAT SOMETHING HIDDEN AWAY IN MY NATURE, LIKE A TREASURE IN A FIELD, IS HUMILITY. ❞
OSCAR WILDE, DE PROFUNDIS
Each person is a mystery
I can't presume to know how to help anyone.
What I have learned as a therapist, something I didn't know before I began this work, is that each person is a mystery never to be fully understood.
The so-called problems people bring to therapy aren't problems at all; they're mysteries, and the response to a mystery should be entirely different from that to a problem. A mystery is something not to be solved, but only to be honoured, appreciated, contemplated, and revered. I can best do my job by offering a chair, week after week, and a space free of ambitious intentions and heroics. I have to wash my hands, the way a priest ritually washes his or her hands before the holiest part of the rite, as an image representing purity of intention. I have to free myself of any salvational fantasies-any need on my part to save this person from fate or destiny, from the pain that is part of the initiatory progress of life, and from whatever demons he or she may describe in the hours of conversation.
- Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life