John Powell, "Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?"
* The unreflected life isn't worth living. (Socrates)
* I am afraid to tell you who I am, because, if I tell you who I am, you may not like who I am, and it's all
that I have.
* I can help you to accept and open yourself mostly by accepting and revealing myself.
* I can only know that much of myself which I have had the courage to confide to you.
* What you and I really need is a moment of truth and a habit of truth with ourselves. We have to ask
ourselves in the quiet, personal privacy of our own minds and hearts: What games do I play? What is it
that I am trying to hide? What is it that I hope to win?
* A growing person is self-renewing as new as each day. Study his face and hands listen to his voice,
look for change, it is certain that he has changed.
* The defensive person cannot be a growing person because his world is no bigger than himself and
the circle of his horizons is closed.
* The fully human being can go outside of himself, can be committed to a cause; and he does this
freely. Of course, the fully human being must be free.
* The fully human being, in his love, does not identify himself with what he loves, as though they were
accretions to himself.
* There is neither freedom nor real life without an apprenticeship in dispossession.
* The behavior of the fully human being is always unpredictable - simply because it is free.
* When man lives fully in all of his faculties, and harmonizes all of his powers, human nature will prove
constructive and trustworthy.
* The fully human person is an Actor not a Reactor.
* Fully human person is his own person, that he does not bend to every wind which blows, that he is
riot at the mercy of all the pettiness, the meanness, the impatience and anger of others. Atmospheres do
not transform him as much as he transforms them.
* In fully human person, there is a balance of senses, emotions, intellect and will.
* What I am, at any given moment in the process of my becoming a person, will be determined by my
relationships with those who love me or refuse to love me, with those whom I love or refuse to love.
* It is certain that a relationship will be only as good as its communication. If you and I can honestly tell
each other who we are, … then and then only can each of grow.
* I must be able to tell you who I am before I can know who I am. And I must know who I am before I can
act truly, that is, in accordance with my true self.
* Human life has its laws, one of which is: We must use things and love people… not love things and
use people.
* To refuse the invitation to interpersonal encounter is to be an isolated dot in the center of a great
circle… a small island in a vast ocean.
* Paul Simon, "Sound of Silence"
And in the naked night I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more,
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never shared.
No one dared disturb the sounds of silence.
* Dishonesty always has a way of coming back to haunt and trouble us.
* To reveal myself openly and honestly takes the rawest kind of courage.
* The non-repression of our emotions means that we must experience, recognize, and accept our
emotions fully.
* Feelings are like steam that is gathering inside of a kettle. Kept inside and gathering strength, they
can blow the human lid off, just as the steam inside of the kettle will blow off the lid of the kettle.
* We do not bury our emotions dead; they remain alive in our subconscious minds and intestines, to
hurt and trouble us.
* Anyone who builds a relationship on less than openness and honesty is building on sand.
* All communication must obviously respect not only the transmitter of the communication but also the
receiver who is to accept the communication.
* If I am willing to step out of the darkness of my prison, to expose the deepest part of me to another
person, the result is almost always automatic and immediate: the other person feels empowered to reveal
himself to me.
* Whatever my secrets are, remember when I entrust them to you, they are part of me.
* Your emotions and how you deal with them will probably make you or break you in the adventure of
life.
* Anyone who feels that he is understood will certainly feel that he is loved.
* To understand people, I must try to hear what they are not saying, what they perhaps will never be
able to say.
* "Sorry, this is the way I am… I was like this in the beginning, am now, and ever shall be…" is a handy
motto and delusion to have around you if you don't want to grow up.
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