• robust immersion in quality connection marked by vulnerability, self-disclosure, and empathetic listening, experienced in a concentrated form, can fast-track a friendship into existence in a shorter amount of time.




• taking action to be vulnerable with the other person first is key to deepening feelings of trust.

from We Should Get Together: The Secret

“Lose yourself in books, in art, in the haze of new horizons. Lose yourself in curiosity, in knowledge, in passion. Lose yourself in feeling it all; lose yourself in the world, in the stories and the lessons it has to teach you, but never lose yourself in love; never lose yourself in another person. You are your own home—please don’t ever forget

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”

Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

I have lately led so unsettled a life, and have been so desultory in my employments, that my mind, never of the most highly organized genus, is more than usually chaotic, or, rather, it is like a stratum of conglomerated fragments, that shows here a jaw and rib of some ponderous quadruped, there a delicate alto-relievo of some fern-like plant, tiny

As the writer and activist Naomi Klein puts it, ‘There are no non-radical options left before us.’34 I believe imagination is the only thing we have that is – or could be – radical enough to get us through, provided it is accompanied, of course, by bravery, and by action.

Rob Hopkins • From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to

...let me make a general observation—the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

F Scott Fitzgerald

“Do not chase another human being. Instead, chase your curiosity. Chase your development and your goals. Chase your passion. Strive to work for something bigger than yourself, and instead of trying to convince someone that you fit within their world, strive to build your own.”

― Bianca Sparacino, Seeds Planted in Concrete

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it's this day-to-day living that wears you out.”

― Clifford Odets

the notion of adhering to one ‘true self’ flies in the face of much research on how people evolve with experience, discovering facets of themselves they would never have unearthed through introspection alone - Herminia Ibarra