We are all born into families and cultures we didn't choose, given names we didn't pick, instructed in behaviour and values we might not have freely chosen, and too often we end up expected to live lives designed by others.

The therapist can interpret, advise, provide the emotional acceptance and support that nurtures personal growth, and above all, he can listen. I do not mean that he can simply hear the other, but that he will listen actively and purposefully, responding with the instrument of his trade, that is, with the personal vulnerability of his own trembling self. This listening is that which will facilitate the patient's telling of his tale, the telling that can set him free. (5)

You win some, you lose some, and your losses are never made up to you. She will simply have to do without; like it or not, she must face her losses and her helplessness to undo them.

All significant battles are fought within self.

The adult May fly lives only a few hours, just long enough to mate. He has neither mouth nor stomach, but needs neither since he does not live long enough to need to eat. The eggs the May fly leaves hatch after the parent has died. What is it all about. What's the point? There is no point. That's just the way it is. It is neither good nor bad. Life is mainly simply inevitable. (41)

Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person's suffering. It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his pain. (23)

Dreams provide a kind of wisdom of the heart, an echoing voice of a profound human sensitivity too often lost to us in the reasonable life of days.