Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest.

Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by agreement or by emotional appeal.

The beginning of personal transformation is absurdly easy. We have only to pay attention to the flow of attention itself.

Cultural transformation announces itself in sputtering fits and starts, sparked here and there by minor incidents, warmed by new ideas that may smolder for decades. In many different places, at different times, the kindling is laid for the real conflagration-the one that will consume the old landmarks and alter the landscape forever.

We cannot leave the trap until we know we are in it.

Those who have most at stake in the old culture, or are most rigid in their beliefs, try to summon people back to the old ideas.'