An intelligent person might feel lonely… or tend to be lonely…
Maybe because he does not benefit much from people… or because he does not like the way they act… or does not find a match to his friendship.
The philosopher Diogenes is a clear example: he was seen carrying a lamp during the daytime, and when asked the reason, he said, “I am searching for a person!”
Thus an intelligent person could fall in pride too…
Either due to his continual success, or by people’s talk about his brilliant deeds, or feeling superior when compared to others… Generally, the virtue of humility on the part of those who are intelligent needs a greater effort…
Here, someone might ask this intelligent question: why doesn’t the intelligent person discover these faults, through his intelligence, and avoid them?
The answer is that he might discover his faults, but to avoid them is another point. There is a difference between the intellectual and spiritual, between the mind and soul.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Words of Spiritual Benefit Vol. 1
Category: FRIENDSHIP
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Researchers have found that people often feel more comfortable being honest and open about their inner selves with strangers than they do with their friends and their families — that they often feel more understood by strangers. This gets reported in the media with great lament. “Strangers communicate better than spouses!” It’s a good headline, right? I think it entirely misses the point. The important thing about these studies is just how significant these interactions can be; how this special form of closeness gives us something we need as much as we need our friends and our families.
Kio Stark: Why you should talk to strangers -
There’s something about being in your 20s that invites these moments of loneliness, these harsh blows and deep stings.
We’re told these are the best years of our life, but they really just feel like the loneliest.
What people in their thirties, forties and lamenting fifties fail to remember in the glamorized testimonials of their youth, are all the moments of deep loneliness and despair that come with being a twenty-something. They forget the life they had before finding their partners, their kids, their perfect apartments.
They forget the late nights with the wrong people, the bad jobs with the bad pay and the years of unknowing. The days followed by months of complete and utter uncertainty.
Uncertainty about everything. Jobs, lovers, friends. We’re thrown into this array of “real life” and told to figure it out. We lose jobs, gain enemies and find out that true friendships are almost as hard to find as true love. We realize that, in this chaotic whirlwind of responsibility and life planning, we’re alone.
It’s like the infinite feeling of being abroad. However, unlike that semester in college, there is no foreseeable return date.
No reassurance that in these moments of debilitating homesickness and misery that you will eventually be back, in the comfort of your familiar house with your parents protecting you.
There is no more home. This loneliness, instability and chaos is your home. This emptiness, this sh*tty apartment with no one to come home to or meals cooked for you, is your life. This instability is infinite, or at least until you grow up and find ways to make a home for yourself.
It’s Proven: Why The Greatest People Are Many Times The Loneliest
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“There is nothing more freeing in life than when a friend forgives you. There is nothing that feels quite as liberating as knowing you’ve wronged someone that you love so much and, feeling it — feeling it in your chest — and they graciously forgive you. They graciously let it go. It’s the most liberal. It’s it feels like you were in jail and you were taken out of jail. It feels like, it feels like you were in despair, and they lifted you out of their despair. And it’s a unique position where only they have right, only the friend you’ve wronged has the ability to graciously forgive you. So let’s do that with our friends. Let’s model the good behavior. Let’s do this. Let’s do this with our friends.”
—Fr. Mark Eskandar -
Remember the great love and great achievements involve great risks. The measure of love is when you love without measure. In life, there are very rare chances that you meet the person you love and who loves you in return. So once you have it, don’t ever let go—the chance might never come your way again. It’s better to lose your pride to the one you love than to lose the one you love because of pride. We spend so much time looking for the right person to love or finding fault with those who we already love, when instead, we should be perfecting the love we give. When you truly care for someone, you don’t look for faults, you don’t look for answers, you don’t look for mistakes. Instead, you fight the mistakes, you accept the faults, and you overlook excuses. Never abandon an old friend. You will never find one who can take his or her place. Friendship is like fine wine—it gets better as it grows older.
—Fr. Mauritius -
Is your love for friends and favoured ones also firm? Or could any specific event make your heart change towards a love that you had for many years? That is what sometimes happens in a family which makes it collapse and separate after many years. It fails to hold fast against the water, even if it is not many waters.
Does your love change because of a word that did not please your ears? Or a behaviour that annoyed you? Or the effect of others on you? Or for external circumstances, or financial reasons? Then the words of the Bible echo in your ears, “nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” (Rev. 2:4).
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Words of Spiritual Benefit Vol. IV
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Coping with Being Honoured
Saint Antonius the Great said: “Many people can endure being insulted, but they cannot bear to be honoured. For to be able to endure being honoured is harder than to put up with insults .”….
Being honoured might push some people towards pride so that they feel superior to others or ignore them, or mistreat them. It may make them change their surroundings, friends and way of life. It might induce them to become conceited and talk arrogantly with people…
All this goes to show that they have not been able to cope with being honoured since it has changed their character and behaviour towards others. As the poet said, “When my friend’s family becomes a rich family, I can be sure that I have lost my friend.”
As for the person who is inwardly strong, or the person who is as humble as the Virgin Mary, then being honoured cannot change him.
Whatever position he gains, whatever wealth or titles, power or knowledge, and however much the people praise him, he remains the same…
It is a wonder how in spite of all this he does not lose his simplicity and humility or his good relationship with people and does not abandon his former friends or seek a new environment which he considers more in keeping with his new dignity… !
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life
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“For I have often seen people who had offended God and were not in the least perturbed about it. And I have seen how those same people provoked their friends in some trifling matter and then employed every artifice, every device, every sacrifice, every apology, both personally and through friends and relatives, not sparing gifts, in order to regain their former love.”
— St. John Climacus -
It says in Proverbs, “He who covers a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates friends.”(Proverbs 17:9) If I learn that my brother has sinned, and I accept him and cover his sin, then I am seeking love, but if I begin speaking about his sin, and continue talking about him, I separate people.
“We should not snoop on people, and places, to discover others’ sins. If the sins of others were presented to us, being forced upon us, we should not examine them nor turn to them.”
—Abba Pimen the Solitary—
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
SO GOOD QUOTES 