It's the quality of your relationships that matters.
Interpretation
The strength and depth of your connections with others are more important than any external success.
This quote emphasizes that the value of our lives is not determined by our achievements or material possessions, but rather by the quality of the relationships we cultivate. Strong, meaningful connections with family, friends, and loved ones provide support, happiness, and a sense of belonging that enrich our experiences and contribute to our overall well-being.
In practice
Encouraging someone to focus on building deeper bonds rather than just chasing career success.
Being human means there's a wall-builder in each of us. Our minds naturally divide the world into me and not-me, us and them. For thousands of years, our sages have taught that we're all one, yet we still divide wherever we look.
The good life is built with good relationships.
It's not just the number of friends you have, and it's not whether or not you're in a committed relationship. It's the quality of your close relationships that matters.
It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected.
People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner, and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely.
Most of what we know about human life we know from asking people to remember the past, and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20. We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life, and sometimes memory is downright creative.
Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care... -Wintergirls
Has there not been, sometimes, this temptation to do a great deal for Christ, but not to live a great deal with Christ?
I feel like my life is so scattered right now. Like it's all the small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. But, talking to you makes me feel like the fan's been turned off for a little bit. Like things could actually make sense. You completely unscatter me, and I appreciate that so much.
I think if you've suffered, if you've experienced loss, you're probably more open to understanding it and more comfortable talking about it and experiencing it.
When I wrote 'Lean In,' some people argue that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they don't have a partner. They were right.
Here in America, we don't let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes from when we appreciate each other's strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other, because in this country, it's never been each person for themselves. No, we're all in this together. We always have been.
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