true self

“The true value of human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.”

-Albert Einstein

language of men

“To come to man’s estate it is not necessary to get oneself killed round Madrid, or to fly mail planes, or to struggle wearily in the snows out of respect for the dignity of life. The man who can see the miraculous in a poem, who can take pure joy from music, who can break his bread with comrades, opens his window to the same refreshing wind off the sea. He too learns a language of men.

But too many men are left unawakened.”

－Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars

narrative self

“…silent walking seemed to improve my memory. …You go out into the wild and you ‘discover who you are’, you ‘establish your individual voice,’ or ‘your authentic identity’. One of the definitions of identify or selfhood being explored at present in both philosophy and psychiatry is the idea that the ability to construct a coherent narrative of one’s own life circumscribes identity-to be an individual is to own a narrative self.”-from: A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland

at that moment

"One day, a few days after the liberation, I walked through the country past flowering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the market town near the camp.Larks rose to the sky and I could hear their joyous song. There was no one to be seen for miles around; there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the lark’s jubilation and the freedom of space. I stopped, looked around, and up to the sky - and then I went down my knees. At that moment there was very little I knew of myself and the world - I had but one sentence in mind-always the same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.” "- Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning