Morning Trip (327)

“One of the basic problems in close relationships is the tendency to expect the other person to be and act the person you want them to be. It takes considerable maturity to allow the other to live his or her own life. You may have certain needs that you hope your friend or lover or family member will fulfill. You may live by certain rules and habits that you hope everyone will adopt. You may have a worldview that works for you, and you can’t understand why someone closer to you doesn’t share it. This clinging to self-interests has to change. You may have to learn to appreciate and ultimately enjoy the other person’s ways and especially the mysteries that lead them on.

Allowing the other his or her own life and destiny is a spiritual achievement, a religious act, if you will, that raises the relationship above the level of mere human connection.”

–Thomas Moore, A Religion of One’s Own, quote encountered on the Perpetual Journal dated 8.25.14 of Rosemary Washington Chapter Two

Morning Trip (239)

“Advice to those about to acquire a Vermeer: Always look at it as it might appear in its average moments–not as it might glow in the light-dance of the fireplace, or burn from within on a fall Sunday morning when the amalgamation of the sun’s rays blasts red upon those fat dutch cheeks, or as you would make it glow when you return home flushed with the one victory or another, or with wine. None of that.

Rather think: What will this masterpiece look like at 2:45 on a February afternoon when you have run out of toilet paper and the roof leaks and a horse has just kicked in your kitchen door for the fun of it. And a dead badger is wedged high in the chimney, stinking up the house. Consider such moments as these, when you are about to acquire your Vermeer. But yes. She is as lovely as a Vermeer.”
–Roger Rosenblatt, The Book of Love