The only time you should look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
Interpretation
Focus on the well-being of others rather than comparing yourself to them.
This quote emphasizes the importance of caring for others and ensuring they have what they need, rather than engaging in jealousy or comparison. It suggests that we should be motivated by kindness and generosity, rather than competition or envy, which can detract from our own happiness and the happiness of those around us.
In practice
During a community meeting about helping neighbors, I shared this quote to encourage generosity.
I just always loved comedy and I really wanted to be good at it. And it was heartbreaking, 'cause I started and I wasn't good at it. I was only 17-years-old, so I had a lot to learn about life in general. But I just kept on trying. I was young enough and stupid enough and I had no other choice. I had nothing else I was good at.
It's a positive thing to talk about terrible things and make people laugh about them.
[about being a father] I don't really remember what it was like before. Whatever I had going on, it was bullshit. It wasn't important. It's kind of a nice thing about being a dad. My identity is really about them now, and what I can do for them, so it sort of takes the pressure off of your own life. What am I going to do, who am I? Who cares, you've got to get your kids to school. So I like it that way.
In 27 years doing this, I've seen a handful of truly great, masterful standup sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo.
When you write from your gut and let the stuff stay flawed and don't let anybody tell you to make it better, it can end up looking like nothing else.
People come back from flights and tell you a story like it's a horror story. That's how bad they make it sound. They're like, 'It was the worst day of my life. We didn't board for 20 minutes and they made us sit there on the runway for 40 minutes.' Oh really? What happened next? Did you fly in the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight you non-contributing zero?'
There's no doubt that the Christian right has gone to bed with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And there's been a melding in their goals when it comes to the separation of church and state. I've always believed in the separation of church and state.
We ought not to schismatize on either men or measures. Principles alone can justify that.
Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.
It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.
Your life is an expression of all your thoughts.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversation?
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.