Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
Rollo MayRead
We are anxious because we do not know what roles to pursue, what principles for action to believe in. Our individual anxiety, somewhat like that of the nation, is a basic confusion and bewilderment about where we are going.
Interpretation
Anxiety stems from uncertainty regarding our roles and guiding principles in life.
This quote by Rollo May highlights the root of anxiety as a lack of clarity about our purpose and values. It suggests that both individual and collective anxiety arise from confusion about direction, emphasizing the importance of understanding our roles and the principles that guide our actions.
In practice
Discussing the challenges of college freshmen who feel lost about their future.
Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive - to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before
Terrorism and the whole drug scene are vivid examples of the fact that what persons abhor most of all in life is the possibility that they will not matter.
Humor is the healthy way of feeling "distance" between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problem with perspective.
Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line.
India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
This life is not real. I conquered the world and it did not bring me satisfaction.
See that you buy the field where the Pearl is; sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy: for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory: many are lying dead by the way, slain with security.
For the current of our spiritual life creeds, rituals and channels that may thwart or help, according to their fixity or openness. When a symbol or spiritual idea becomes rigidly elaborate in its construction, it supplants the idea which it should support.
Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.
That world is ended, as if it had never been. Let the race of Adam and Eve take warning.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.