“Innumerable are the ways in which I treat you as a means. I ask your help, I ask for Information, I may buy from you or buy what you have made, and you sometimes dispel my loneliness. Nor do I count the ways in which you treat me as a means. You ask my help, you ask me questions, you may buy what I have written, and at times I ease your loneliness. Even when you treat me only as a means I do not always mind. A genuine encounter can be quite exhausting, even when it is exhilarating, and I do not always want to give myself…”
-Walter Kaufman, I and You
“Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and your life will be serene”
-Epictetus, The Enchiridion
Show me, LORD, my life’s endand the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is.
-Psalm 39:4