Baggage

"It's dark because you are trying too hard.  Lightly child, lightly.  Learn to do everything lightly.  Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply.  Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.  I was so preposterously serious in those days... Lightly, lightly -- it's the best advice given me...So throw away your baggage and go forward.   There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.  That's why you must walk so lightly.  Lightly my darling..."

Aldous Huxley

Being Examined by Socrates

"I don’t think you appreciate what happens when you come into close proximity with Socrates and strike up a conversation with him. Whatever the original topic of your conversation, eventually he’s bound to head you off and to trap you into trying to explain your own way of life and how you’ve lived up to now. And once you’re caught in the trap, Socrates won’t let you go until he’s subjected every detail to a thorough, rigorous test. I’m familiar with his ways and I know that such treatment at his hands is inevitable. Besides, I’m sure to face it myself, because I enjoy his company, Lysimachus, and I don’t think there’s any harm in being reminded of flaws in our past or present behaviour. On the contrary, in the future you’re bound to be more thoughtful if you don’t avoid this treatment but submit to it, bearing in mind what Solon said, and expect to go on learning as long as you live, rather than imagining that old age arrives with wisdom in its train. Anyway, in my view being examined by Socrates isn’t at all odd or unpleasant."
The character Nicias in Plato's dialogue "Laches", 187e ff.

Our houses

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them. Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Economy, 1854US Transcendentalist author (1817 - 1862) Our

‘ I-You’

There are many modes of I-You.

Kant told men always to treat humanity, in our person as well as that of others, as an end also and never only as a means. This is one way of setting off I-You from I-It. And when he is correctly quoted and the "also" and the "only" are not omitted, as they all too often are, one may well marvel at his moral wisdom.

from "I and Thou" (Martin Buber)