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Showing Up Uninvited
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When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.
~ Ilya Prigogine
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I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized…
~ Haim G. Ginott
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I think of two women a lot these days: Joan Didion and Patricia Bosworth. I can’t imagine what they would think of the world now. The arts. People, in general. Both women were appalled by what they called the baseness of people; the scrambling toward recognition; the addiction of attention.
“Speaking without a story,” Didion called it. “Showing up uninvited,” Bosworth dubbed it.
~ From Follies of God, Thank you, Lili Anolik
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