understanding

I looked forward to making friends at school, but I had come late and friendships had already been formed. I couldn__ find my way into their world. They seemed to have a secret code I couldn__ decipher.

You're going to come across some truly gifted people in your lifetime that seem to know all the answers. However, they lost their personal relationship with God, along the way. Love them anyways, and do everything you can to help them restore that relationship. They are fighting a war that you don't know anything about.

When you lose your ego, you win. It really is that simple.

Don__ waste your time trying to explain yourself to people that are committed to misunderstanding you. Instead, commit your time to explaining who they are to them. When you get a person to see the positive similarities you share, it begins to restore the loss of respect between you.

Be a good listener. With rapt attention, let every communication or conversation you have with your mentor, friends or even strangers be well understood.

Store up knowledge. Then question your own knowledge in order to expand your mind, both to build and to create more space. Then store up more knowledge. And so on. That is wisdom.

Cammie!" I'll never forget the tone of Macey's voice in that moment. "Cam," she said slowly, moving toward me, "I know how it feels to be watched every second of every day. I know what it's like to trust fewer and fewer people until it seems like you are completely alone in the world. I know you think the only things that are left in your life are the bad things. I know what you're feeling, Cam." Her hands were on my shoulders. Her blue eyes were staring into mine. "I know.

Life is a great big beautiful three-ring circus. There are those on the floor making their lives among the heads of lions and hoops of fire, and those in the stands, complacent and wowed, their mouths stuffed with popcorn. I know less now than ever about life, but I do know its size. Life is enormous. Much grander than what we__e taken for ourselves, so far. When the show is over and the tent is packed, the elephants, lions and dancing poodles are caged and mounted on trucks to caravan to the next town. The clown__ makeup has worn, and his bright, red smile has been washed down a sink. All that is left is another performance, another tent and set of lights. We rest in the knowledge: the show must go on. Somewhere, behind our stage curtain, a still, small voice asks why we haven__ yet taken up juggling. My seminars were like this. Only, instead of flipping shiny, black bowling balls or roaring chainsaws through the air, I juggled concepts. The world is intrinsically tied together. All things march through time at different intervals but move ahead in one fashion or another. Though we may never understand it, we are all part of something much larger than ourselves__omething anchoring us to the spot we have mentally chosen. We sniff out the rules, through spiritual quests and the sciences. And with every new discovery, we grow more confused. Our inability to connect what seems illogical to unite and to defy logic in our understanding keeps us from enlightenment. The artists and insane tiptoe around such insights, but lack the compassion to hand-feed these concepts to a blind world. The interconnectedness of all things is not simply a pet phrase. It is a big ___ truth that the wise spend their lives attempting to grasp.

But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand - If it is to be done, it must be by studying Humboldt.

If you can get others to believe that your random guesses are actual answers, they__l never guess that you never understood the question in the first place.

To be productive, effective and to live a life of understanding and wisdom is not to waste time

Through wisdom your days will be many, and years will be added to your life_By wisdom a house is built, by understanding it is established; And by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.

...that breath of relief that there is someone in the world, finally, who understands what hurts you.

Or rather, he was sad because that morning he'd understood that he'd understood nothing, because while he still understood nothing he wasn't sad at all, but now that he'd understood that he'd understood nothing he felt sad, if you follow.

Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet _ for me, anyway _ all that__ worth living for lies in that charmA great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.

The women glare at each other. Grin. You have friends when you're fifteen years old. Sometimes you get them back.

We all think when we__e young that we want excitement and highs and passion. To hell with ordinary.__ smiled and she chuckled. __ut when we find ourselves in these adult bodies,_ she said. __hen we wise up a little, or get slapped in the face by life, we realize we just want all things to be equal._ She put the heels of her hands together near her heart like the Yoga prayer position. __nd we want to understand them better.

... being with people who don't understand is worse than being alone with her grief.