‘I wonder sometimes if the teacher is not the real student and beneficiary’ (George Steiner)
Many a contemporary man … gives up his power, originality, and independence, because of fearing exile if he does not. He renounces his power and conforms under the great threat and peril of ostracism.
Rollo May, Existential Psychotherapy
Unless, of course, one doesn’t – only to find oneself duly ostracised. The wisdom of May’s statement should not be missed despite its gendered language – a product of the time.
Two quotes from the diaries of Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell, better known as Anaïs Nin:
It is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar, unwilling to explore the unfamiliar.
When we totally accept a pattern not made by us, not truly our own, we wither and die. People’s conventional structure is often a façade. Under the most rigid conventionality there is often an individual, a human being with original thoughts or inventive fantasy, which he does not dare expose for fear of ridicule, and this is what the writer and artist are willing to do for us. They are guides and map makers to greater sincerity. They are useful, in fact indispensable, to the community. They keep before our eyes the variations which make human beings so interesting.
From: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955
Karl Möller 