“The only thing you can be certain about every person is that nobody escapes high school. Whatever your high school fears were, they are still there.”

Second, you can try “This Is Your Life.” This is a game some couples play at the end of each year. They write out a summary of the year from their partner’s point of view. That is, they write, in the first person, about what challenges their partner faced and how he or she overcame them. Reading over these first-person accounts of your life can be

A writer could blast out her opinions, but writers are at their best not when they tell people what to think but when they provide a context within which others can think.

“We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

She knew from prior experience that people who are demanding, critical, and angry tend to be intensely lonely. She intuited that there was some internal struggle inside John, that there were feelings he was hiding from, which he had built moats and fortresses to keep away.

By the way, the people who address themselves in the second or even the third person have less anxiety, give better speeches, complete tasks more efficiently, and communicate more effectively. If you’re able to self-distance in this way, you should.

“Filling in the Calendar.” This involves walking through periods of the other person’s life, year by year. What was your life like in second grade? In third grade?

“virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.”

“American culture is defined more and more by an absence, and in that absence, we provide children with no moral horizons beyond the self and its well-being.”