Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
Memory depends mainly upon myth. Some even occurs in our minds, in actuality or in fantasy; we form it in memory, molding it like clay day after day - and soon we have made out of that event a myth. We then keep the myth in memory as a guide to future similar situations.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Memory is shaped by myths, both real and imagined, influencing our future perceptions and decisions.
This quote from Rollo May suggests that our memories are not static recordings of past events; instead, they are dynamic constructs that we shape over time. Both actual experiences and our fantasies play a role in how we recall the past, allowing us to create myths that serve as guides for how we approach similar situations in the future. This reflects the idea that memory is as much an act of creation as it is a recollection, underscoring the influence of narrative and myth on our understanding of reality.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a psychology seminar discussing the nature of memory.
More from Rollo May
All quotes →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.
Similar quotes
We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest-cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences.
Self-examination - when the whole world around you is pressuring that and challenging you - is very, very hard. Looking at a whole structure - in my case, let us say of snobbery, basking in certain privileges, marks of what appear to be superiority - that's ugly to look at.
The human brain has evolved the capacity to impose a narrative, complete with chronology and cause-and-effect logic, on whatever it encounters, no matter how apparently random.
Tessa was convinced that it was a lie, and also that everything she had done in her life, telling herself that it was for the best, had been no more than blind selfishness, generating confusion and mess all around. But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know they all were?
War never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always.
Occasionally the conflict between 'what we stand for' and 'what we do' has been forthrightly addressed.