I'm not sure if resilience is ever achieved alone. Experience allows us to learn from example. But if we have someone who loves us-I don't mean who indulges us, but who loves us enough to be on our side-then it's easier to grow resilience, to grow belief in self, to grow self-esteem. And it's self-esteem that allows a person to stand up.
To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.
We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall.
But inwardly we are as corrupt as the person who sits in an office and plans war-because, we want to be somebody in the family, in a group, in society, in the nation.
When we look at a child, we see that sense of fullness, of intrinsic aliveness, of joy in being, is not the result of something else. There is value in just being oneself, it is not because of something one does or doesn't do. It is there in the beginning, when we are children, but slowly it gets lost.
To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.
Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.
Imagination builds the image of the self, and thought then functions within its shadows. From this self-concept grows the conflict between what is and what should be, the conflict in duality.
I get so nervous on stage I can't help but talk. I try. I try telling my brain: stop sending words to the mouth. But I get nervous and turn into my grandma. Behind the eyes it's pure fear. I find it difficult to believe I'm going to be able to deliver.