"Memory itself is neutral, mechanical, the same function that lets you recall a phone number or the way home without any preference for one over the other. Left alone, it would let most things fade, including the old slight that still bothers you for no reason you can name. The ego is what keeps the slight alive, picking through that storage and pulling out exactly what serves its story while leaving the rest to fade on its own."

Years pass, and the absorbed becomes the assumed, and what is assumed long enough, we defend. What entered us as someone else’s anxiety we now call our values. What was handed to us without our knowledge we now guard as conscience, as responsibility,... Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/the-burden-of-borrowed-expectations-4011780

We live in what is probably the most comfortable era our species has known. In practical terms, the body is safer than it has ever been.

"Look closely at what usually passes for happiness: A promotion, a holiday, approval, entertainment."

People run from it into noise and distraction and shallow bonds. But running only makes it worse. Suppressed pain does not heal; it festers.

"Fearlessness is not noisy. It is not a performance. It is a silent freedom. It arises when you no longer wait for the world to tell you who you are, but begin to live from your own centre of self-knowledge."

Self-harm isn’t just about physically hurting ourselves. It is also when we live unconsciously, chasing goals given to us by society and family.