The little things, I can obey. But the big things - how we think, what we value - those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone - or any society - determine those for you.

Keep your heart open for as long as you can, as wide as you can, for others and especially for yourself.

The tension of opposites: Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.

Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another

For me, living means I can be responsive to the other person. It means I can show my emotions and my feelings. Talk to them. Feel with them.

Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.

Be compassionate, and take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much a better place.