He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)
Irvin D. YalomRead
The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Pain cannot be easily avoided; it tends to manifest in different ways regardless of our attempts to suppress it.
This quote by Irvin D. Yalom highlights the inevitability of pain in life. When we try to shut out or ignore our suffering, it often resurfaces in unexpected forms or places, suggesting that rather than evading pain, we should confront and understand it to truly heal and grow.
Themes
PainSufferingHealingEmotionsLife
In practice
Example use cases
During a mental health seminar, to discuss the importance of facing one's emotions.
More from Irvin D. Yalom
All quotes →A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche's message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
Irvin D. YalomRead
A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves, when we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves
Irvin D. YalomRead
Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.
Irvin D. YalomRead
It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one's germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!
Irvin D. YalomRead
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
Irvin D. YalomRead
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There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death's pulses, death's heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to.
Sogyal RinpocheRead
They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.
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I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn’t last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.
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All I know is I'm not a Marxist.
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Often when religious leaders come together, they talk about a particular sexual ethic, or an abstruse doctrine, as though this, rather than compassion, was the test of spiritual life.
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Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.
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