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.
Christmas means 'giving,' and the gift without the giver is bare. Give of yourselves; give of your substance; give of your heart and mind.
She lived in her past life — every letter seemed to recall some circumstance of it. How well she remembered them all! His looks and tones, his dress, what he said and how — these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that were left her in the world.
She's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed; She is a woman, therefore to be won.
I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.
You're the love of my life. I don't care how corny that sounds. You're the start of it, and the end of it. And you're the best of it.
Therefore the love which us doth bind,_x000D_ _x000D_ But fate so enviously debars,_x000D_ _x000D_ Is the conjunction of the mind,_x000D_ _x000D_ And opposition of the stars.
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