Your place in the world does not depend on who acknowledges it.
From The Easy Virtue, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
There is a red maple at the end of the Hallorans' yard that I have used for eleven years, and this morning a man I had never seen stood under it with a clipboard and did not look up once. He counted the trees on that side of the street, wrote something, and walked on. For most of my life I thought a place was something granted, that you held a branch because the jays allowed it and the people below had decided you belonged there. Your place in the world does not depend on who acknowledges it. The maple did not know it had been counted either, and went on holding me and the clipboard man's shade at the same time. I sat there a while after he turned the corner, trying to work out whether I felt smaller or simply unremarked, and I am still not sure those are different.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Every kindness extended a stranger reduces a little the strangeness of the world.
- Just because the situation is critical does not mean it is impossible.
- If your feet are tapping, your heart is beating.
- If you want someone to listen, say something worth listening to.
- If people aren’t stupid, why do they have so much trouble understanding me?
- Good friends can share a laugh at no one's expense.