February 16

Daily Wisdom

Daily Inspiration

Celeste Foley

“If any one idea captures the essence of how the alienated person perceives the world, it is flatness. The world goes flat because withdrawal from the world is at the same time a withdrawal of the projected meanings (cognitive intentions) and values (cathexes) by which we interpret and enliven the world. Accordingly, when alienation sets in, the world begins to lose all modes and gradations of lived depth. It loses its peaks and valleys, challenges and disappointments, profundities and banalities, heroes and fools. It becomes a world in which everything is ‘equal’ in the sense of being equally shallow, neutral, and gray. Actions become ‘equal’ because they are all reduced to mere motions. And persons become ‘equal’ because they are all reduced to mere personas. The world of the alienated person becomes flat throughout, for in withdrawing from the world the alienated persons ceases intersecting in depth with the world.”

                                           Michael Washburn

                                           Sacred Sorrows

“Eclipse”

~ John Denver