Being of service is not an option, it is a biological necessity. Every kind of action we do for someone is a reanimation of our own life force - and of the other person's.
Interpretation
Serving others is essential for our own vitality and well-being.
This quote emphasizes the intrinsic value of serving others, suggesting that acts of service are not merely optional but fundamental to our existence. When we help others, we not only contribute to their life energy but also rejuvenate our own, highlighting the interconnected nature of human relationships and the importance of altruism.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a motivational speech on community service.
When we harbor negative emotions toward others or toward ourselves, or when we intentionally create pain for others, we poison our own physical and spiritual systems. By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person. It disables a person's emotional resources. The challenge...is to refine our capacity to love others as well as ourselves and to develop the power of forgiveness.
Wounds are the means through which we enter the hearts of other people. They are meant to teach us to become compassionate and wise.
I am convinced that the deepest desire within each of us is to be liberated from the controlling influences of our own psychic madness or patterns of fear. All other things—the disdain of ordinary life, the need to control others rather than be controlled, the craving for material goods as a means of security and protection against the winds of chaos—are external props that serve as substitutes for the real battle, which is the one waged within the individual soul.
Healing is a different type of pain. It’s the pain of becoming aware of the power of one’s strength and weakness, of one’s capacity to love or do damage to oneself and to others, and of how the most challenging person to control in life is ultimately yourself.
The most pressing question on the problem of faith is whether a man as a civilized being can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests the whole of our faith.
The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science, or technology, but the recognition of its own dysfunction.
We have inhabited both the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don't live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the age. We know a dozen Arthurs now, all of them true. The Shire changed irrevocably even in Bilbo's lifetime. Don Quixote went riding out to Argentina and met Jorge Luis Borges there. Plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change.
The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
If we cannot make a profit, that means we are committing a sort of crime against society. We take society's capital, we take their people, we take their materials, yet without a good profit, we are using precious resources that could be better used elsewhere.
Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.
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