Hi... i shared this with someone in the prayer room here in Ibiza today because i thought he needed to hear it... I need to hear it... maybe you do to..
'Our capacity to choose changes constantly with our practice of life. The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens, the more we make the right decision the more our heart softens- or better perhaps, comes alive.... Each step in life which increases my self-confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction also increases my capacity to choose the desirable alternative, until eventually it becomes more difficult for me to choose the undesirable rather than the desirable action.
On the other hand, each act of surrender and cowardice weakens me, opens the path for more acts of surrender and eventually freedom is lost. Between the extreme where i can no longer do a wrong act and the extreme when i have lost my freedom to right action, there are innumerable degrees of freedom of choice. In the practice of life, the degree of freedom is different at any given moment. If the degree of freedom to choose the good is great, it needs less effort to choose the good. If it is small, it takes great effort, help from others and favourable circumstances...
Most people fail at the art of living not because they are inherently bad or so without will that they cannot lead a better life, they fail because they do not wake up and see when they stand at a fork in the road and have to decide. They are not aware when life asks them a question, and when they still have alternative answers. Then each step along the wrong road it becomes increasingly difficult for them to admit they are on the wrong road, often only because they have to admit that they have to go back to the first wrong turn and must accept that fact that they have wasted time and energy.'
Te Heart of Man. It's Genius for Good and Evil. p173-178
Eric Fromm (secular Psychologist)
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