Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.
Jean VanierRead
Stop looking for peace. Give yourselves where you are. Stop looking at yourselves, look instead at your brothers and sisters in need. Ask how you can better love your brothers and sisters. Then you will find peace.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Finding peace comes from selflessness and serving others rather than seeking it for oneself.
This quote by Jean Vanier emphasizes the importance of focusing on the needs of others as a pathway to achieving personal peace. Rather than searching for peace through introspection and self-focus, the quote suggests that true tranquility arises when we shift our attention to loving and supporting our fellow human beings, particularly those who are in need.
Themes
PeaceLoveServiceSelflessnessCommunity
In practice
Example use cases
During a community service event, I shared this quote to inspire volunteers.
More from Jean Vanier
All quotes →One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.
Jean VanierRead
We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.
Jean VanierRead
True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside; it must be born within and between communities through meetings and dialogue and then carried outward.
Jean VanierRead
In any case, community is not about perfect people. It is about people who are bonded to each other, each of whom is a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, love and hate.
Jean VanierRead
We have to remind ourselves constantly that we are not saviours. We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible, that the world is not condemned to a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, that class and racial warfare is not inevitable.
Jean VanierRead
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Until you make peace with your difficult memories, that pain will continue to bleed into your current and future experiences.
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Imagination without knowledge may create beautiful things, knowledge without imagination can create only perfect ones.
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