"There is no love that is not an echo."
Theodor Adorno
Browsing category: Relationships
"Who cares about winning? We should focus on serving."
Justin Trudeau
"I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It's a strange truth, but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It's not something that happens overnight. It's an evolution of the heart."
Sue Monk Kidd
"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."
Thomas Merton
"One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood." Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person's thoughts."
Sam Harris
"So through the eyes love attains the heart: For the eyes are the scouts of the heart, And the eyes go reconnoitering For what it would please the heart to possess." Guiraut de Borneilh
"We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say-and to feel- ‘Yes, that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.’ You’re not as alone as you thought." John Steinbeck
This last week I have been composing a letter to my son to receive whilst he is away at camp. All the boys will receive a letter from a significant male in their lives telling them about what it means to grow into manhood and what that young man means to them. It's a powerful rite of passage where an older male voice can give direction and a message of love that hopefully will become a treasured message from their dad, their uncle, their brother - any man who has travelled this path that lies before them. It got me thinking
One of the characteristics of having an uncommon name like Callan is that it can cause you to become self-conscious when you are young. I have mentioned this before in relation to the choice of my children’s names. Growing up I never encountered another soul called Callan. The first time I met another Callan I was in my 20’s. I asked him, “Do you like your name?” He shrugged, smiled and said, “Yeah, I actually do.” Up until then, for me, the name had been burdensome - always having to repeat it, spell it, correct people who