Many of our troubles are chronic. Life is chronic.

We're an air bag society that wants guarantees on everything that we buy. We want to be able to take everything back and get another one. We want a 401-k plan and Social Security.

We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently.

Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem

What I try to point out is the role an ordinary person can have in seeing the child's destiny. You have to have a feeling for the child.

It's the only way we can get out of being so human-centered: to remain attached to something other than humans.

You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault.