a suffering person needs: love, and not knowledge and wisdom.

To ache so deeply now for Nana gave the older woman's life profound meaning. It was a privilege to mourn such a loss because it meant you had loved and been loved.

One of the most often asked questions posed after America was attacked on 9/11 was, 'What has the United States done to arouse so much Muslim hatred?' The question, however, is on the same moral level as asking what German and other European Jews did to cause the Holocaust, or what blacks did to arouse the hatred among the American whites who lynched them.

When we accept our own pain we can begin to see past it to the other person's woundedness. We can begin to consider that if we were in their shoes, if we stood inside their story, we might have done to others what they did to us.

When you truly empathize with someone, you have to take into account all the things that make that person who they are.

Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn't think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?" Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?

Don't tell your problems to people: eighty percent don't care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

Jealousy is a tough thing to carry because it causes us to compare and compete. It silences us from celebrating and affirming. When we live in families that compare and compete, but can't celebrate and affirm, we live at war.

When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.

They also thought to drive away his distemper by harsh and surly carriages to him; sometimes they would deride, sometimes they would chide, and sometimes they would quite neglect him.

What's the key to relating to others? It's putting yourself in someone else's place instead of putting them in their place.

Leaders gain credibility when they suffer with those they lead.