THE POWER OF FIRE

'"If everyone sat in front of a fire once a week," he said, "the people who made tranquillizers would go out of business.'"

Laurie Colwin, Shine on, Bright and Dangerous Object, p.107.

WELL-MEANING BUT UNHELPFUL ENCOURAGEMENT

'Imagine if were heading for a quiet walk in the forest and someone came up to you. 

"Where are you going?" she asks.

"I'm going to the forest," you tell her.

"Wow," she gasps, stepping back. 

"Wow what?"

And then a tear forms in her eye. She places a hand on your shoulder. "You're so brave."

"Am I?"

"So incredibly brave. An inspiration, in fact."

And you would gulp, and go pale, and be permanently put off going into the forest.'

Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet, p.207.

A NEW ROUTE TO WHOLENESS?

'...we are so accustomed to seeking personal wholeness through various forms of self-development, counselling, or therapy that it would occur to very few people to think of citizenship as a path to greater individual wholeness.' 

Daniel Kemmis in John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place, p.132. 

MENTAL HEALTH

'...mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being.'

Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p.104.