The Examined Life

Experience has taught me that our childhoods leave in us stories like this – stories we never found a way to voice, because no one helped us to find the words. When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us – we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don’t understand

It’s about our desire to talk, to understand and be understood. It’s also about listening to each other, not just the words but the gaps in between. What I’m describing here isn’t a magical process. It’s something that is a part of our everyday lives – we tap, we listen

We receive and we lose, and we must try to
achieve gratitude; and with that gratitude to
embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that
remains after the losses.
ANDRE DUBUS, Broken Vessels

In 1972, he wrote: ‘If I had one gift which I could give to people with leprosy, it would be the gift of pain.’

But isn’t this attentiveness – the feeling that someone is trying to think about us – something we want more than praise?