Not too long ago, I wrote a blog post about the book “educated” by Tara Westover. I recently listened to Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations podcast in which Tara was being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey.
Two things that Tara spoke about I found to be quite introspective:
- “Thinking about the world from another person’s point of view is incredibly difficult and I think it is what an education is really. And the thing we don’t know is, or we don’t acknowledge, is that respecting other people is actually kind of the first step to respecting yourself. If you can’t have empathy for a life that is different than yours, you’re not going to be able to look at your own life from different points of view in order to make any change.”
- “There is this intractable, untouchable thing that is you and the trick maybe is to keep the rest of your life still enough so that you listen to it and be aware of it.”
In order to be able to self-reflect, we must also be able to empathize with other people; to appreciate the diversity of the human race. When we are one with ourselves, we feel grounded and secure; leaving ourselves vulnerable to appreciate another person’s story.
If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it.
To listen to the podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/own/oprahs-supersoul-conversations/e/60496548
Photo credit: http://Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
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