But that is the thing about miracles: it is perception that determines them as such, not facts.
Interpretation
Miracles are defined by how we perceive them rather than by the objective facts surrounding them.
This quote emphasizes the subjective nature of miracles, suggesting that what we consider miraculous is heavily influenced by our personal perception and interpretation. While objective facts may not support the occurrence of a miraculous event, it is our emotional response and belief that often define it as a miracle in our lives.
In practice
During a speech about resilience, one might quote this when discussing how positive thinking can shape our experiences.
That idea is strange to me. People keep on loving? People keep on loving even if you are not there in their face everyday to remind them? People keep on loving even if they no longer see you at all? People keep on loving even if they are loving someone else? Impossible: to believe you can be loved in absence when you don't even know how it feels to be loved when you are there.
Once you step inside, history has to be rewritten to include you. A fiction develops a story that weaves you into the social fabric, giving you roots and a local identity. You are assimilated, and in erasing your differences and making you one of their own, the community can maintain belief in its wholeness and purity. After two or three generations, nobody remembers the story is fiction. It has become fact. And this is how history is made.
When I was researching my book 'The 33 Strategies of War', I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.
Being stuck in adolescence - that's a hell. 'Peter Pan' is a dystopia, and we forget that. Neverland is a bad place to be.
We have a habit of turning to scientists when we want factual answers and artists when we want entertainment, but where are the facts about the nature of the self? Neurologists peering at PET scans and fMRIs know they aren't seeing the soul in there.
Mine alone is the country of my soul.
To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.
Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last
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