David Richo

When we tolerate not having our needs met fully, fear turns to vulnerability and a more generous love awakens in us.

Then what we aren’t changing, we are choosing.

We don’t look directly at the problem because we are afraid to see its extent.

We keep it all in the family.

We ask others to deal with the problem for us.

We make an inroad but still don’t look directly at the situation.

We engage in a cover-up and take that to be sufficient.

We are afraid to know the real nature of our relationship to someone.

Sometimes our knowing depends on the voice of someone else. Sometimes knowing ourselves hangs on a word from a person who understands us better than we understand ourselves. We may find out what we are really about from the wise friend or guide. This is the one who knows us not judgmentally but supportively.

In this witnessing style we are showing love since we are accepting without blaming, allowing without interfering.

Sometimes admonitions we heard in childhood obscure the revelation of the true story about ourselves and our predicament: “Stick it out, see it through, be the little engine that could, shut up and take it, never be a quitter, don’t give up no matter what.”

For instance, abuse may put us at an impasse. We don’t doubt our ability to tolerate what is happening, but we are doubting our ability to make a change.

The word olim in Latin has three meanings. When it refers to the past, it means “formerly.” When it refers to the present, it means “for a while now.” When it refers to the future, it means “hereafter.”

But the only hope worthy of the name is the hope that is activated by evidence of change.

what doesn’t work.

All forms of fear may turn us into disbelievers in our capacity to go on, skeptical we can pull off a change, convinced we should put it off indefinitely. Fear dictates to us that we have to wait for more information, for a rescuer, for someone else to make the first move, such as a partner

imagine we will be nobody if we are not defined by others or an institution. We rely on what has been, though it does not nurture us, but has only kept us safe from our terror about launching. A relationship, group, political organization, or cult may pander to that fear and exploit it.