M. Scott Peck (1936-2005)
was a psychiatrist and the best-selling author of a terrific book called The Road Less Traveled. I read it during
the 1980s and it had a profound effect upon my life in terms of helping me deal
with my life at that time and in making some necessary changes. I recommend it because it contains some real wisdom and advice on how to deal with life and its trials and joys.While Peck
himself didn’t always live up to the high ideals he espoused for others (he
didn’t always practice what he preached), he was an inspiration and a man of
wisdom, perhaps all the more so for his failings and weaknesses, and he shared his wisdom and thoughts in his writings.
·
“Until you
value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will
not do anything with it. ”
·
“The truth is
that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply
uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments,
propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and
start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
·
“Love is the
will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's
spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely,
both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to
love. We choose to love.”
·
“Love is the
free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite
capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”
·
“Genuine love
is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because
of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether
or not the loving feeling is present. ...Conversely, it is not only possible
but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love.”
·
“We must be
willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often "Life is not a
problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.”
·
Each one of us
must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no
formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for
another...The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit,
and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness. ”
·
“The difficulty we have in accepting
responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the
consequences of that behavior. ”
·
“Whenever we
seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting
to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity.
But this means we then give away our power to that entity. ”
·
“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do
anything else at the same time. ”
·
“It is only
because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. ”
·
“If we know exactly where we're going, exactly
how to get there, and exactly what we'll see along the way, we won't learn
anything. ”
·
“Human beings
are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a PROFOUND
tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there.”
·
“Life is
difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great
truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know
that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no
longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult
no longer matters.”
·
“There is no
worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realized you have not
lived.”
