Keep your heart open for as long as you can, as wide as you can, for others and especially for yourself.
Interpretation
Maintaining an open heart fosters connection with others and self-acceptance.
This quote emphasizes the importance of openness in emotional and relational experiences. By encouraging individuals to keep their hearts open, Morrie Schwartz highlights the ability to connect deeply with others and cultivate self-love, serving as a reminder that vulnerability is a strength that leads to richer, more meaningful interactions in life.
In practice
In a speech about emotional intelligence, the quote can remind the audience of the value of openness.
People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.
The best way to deal with that is to live in a fully conscious, compassionate, loving way. Don't wait until you're on your deathbed to recognize that this is the only way to live.
Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.
Do the kind of things that come from the heart, When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overhelmed with what comes back
It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.
When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.
Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.
As Marilee and I were dressing, I whispered to her that I loved her with all my heart. What else was there to say? 'You don't. You can't,' she said.
I always wished that I could find someone as beautiful as you, but in the process I forgot that I was special too.
O cold ! O shivery ! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me off this once.
What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion: for yourself and for those around you.
No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path.
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