Quote 490
Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures - Eckhart Tolle
The 52:52:52 project, launching on this site and on social media in 2025, will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.
Compassion
Quote 489
Beneath the sober appearance society demands of us, most of us are going a little out of our minds - giving us a cause to hold out a hand to our comparably tortured neighbours - Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, p180
Quote 488
At an inner city soup kitchen, a young woman was serving meals to guests. It was her very first day and she was nervous and unsure of how to behave around the poor, the indigent, the homeless people she had never seen before. Coming from a middle class neighborhood, she felt she had nothing in common with them, that she had nothing to offer. " As one man was moving past her, she noticed that he had missed his bread portion. She reached out and touched his arm. The man was old, dishevelled and had his head hung low. When he turned, the young woman saw that he was crying. Concerned, she asked if she had hurt him. The man, tears in his eyes replied, "No, you are the first person who has touched me in more than two years" -- a member of Sisters of St. Joseph, Canada
Quote 487
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel - John Ruskin
Halcyon Identifies
Between 1978 and 2008
On Perseverance
Paulo Coelho reminds us in the story of the cracked jar that we can create much that's good by simply trying, as Leonard Cohen advises, to "ring the bells that still can ring..."
On Apathy
What are we lacking - attention, compassion - or both, when we ignore WW2-scale conflicts happening right now?
On Compassion
Well, for me, it certainly wasn't 42, as Douglas Adams tried to convince us, but perhaps the meaning of life is not so complicated after all.
On Sainthood
Theories of a multiverse and nonlocality may go some way towards countering the anthropic principle, but what about down here on Earth? The current rush towards social(ist?) media presupposes that we are biased towards cooperating with one another more and more, a presupposition that certainly feels warm and cosy and toasty during these cold, dark days, and it is certainly how I would like to feel about myself...but is it really true?