But it's a grave mistake to think that being "in love" has little value unless it grows into real love. This is a miserly and reductive way of thinking. First of all, pragmatism about relationships is not an infallible hallmark of maturity and stability. Second, love is not an insurance policy. It is an intention of the heart. For that reason, it's my belief that we should all loosen up a little in our judgements of our own and other's love affairs. We should neither apologise for nor denigrate passion simply because it's unfashionably out of control. We should recognize that wildly romantic love is one of the few forms of risk-taking left for the ordinary individual. In a secular age, it's also the closest thing to a religious experience that most of us are ever likely to feel.
But above all, we must remember the bittersweet joys of a brief and even painful liason can very often enrich and broaden our lives. In even the shortest, most intense love affairs we are granted invaluable opportunities: to cast off stifling inhibitions, to revel in the tumult of emotions, to explore our inner selves, to let go completely. This can be risky, yes, but so can "companiable marriage." Because there is nothing in life more dangerous for the soul than to be starved for passion.

Cosmopolitan

Cease then, nor order imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.
Submit. - In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blessed as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing Power,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All Nature is art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

There has been a haze, a backup problem in this Chautauqua so far; I talked about caring the first day and then realized I couldn't say anything meaningful about caring until its inverse side, Quality, is understood. I think it's important now to tie care to Quality by pointing out that care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristics of Quality.

Thus, if the problem of technological hopelessness is caused by absence of care, both by technologists and antitechnologists; and if care and Quality are external and internal aspects of the same thing, then it follows logically that what really causes technological hopelessness is absence of the perception of Quality technology by both technologists and antitechnologists. Phædrus' mad pursuit of the rational, analytic and therefore technological meaning of the word ``Quality'' was really a pursuit of the answer to the whole problem of technological hopelessness. So it seems to me, anyway.

Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The beauty of the human countenance is more complex, than any we have yet examined. It includes the beauty of colour, arising from the delicate shades of the complexion; and the beauty of figure, arising from the lines which form the different features of the face. But the chief beauty of the countenance depends upon a mysterious expression, which it conveys of the qualities of the mind; of good sense, of good humour; of sprightliness, candour, benevolence, sensibility, or other amiable dispositions. How it comes to pass, that a certain conformation of features is connected in our idea with certain moral qualities; whether we are taught by instinct, or by experience, to form this connection, and to read the mind in the countenance; belongs not to us now to enquire, nor is indeed easy to resolve. The fact is certain, and acknowledged, that what gives the human countenance its most distinguishing Beauty, is what is called its expression; or an image, which it is conceived to show of internal moral dispositions.

This leads us to observe, that there are certain qualities of the mind, which, whether expressed in the countenance, or by words, or by actions, always raise in us a feeling similar to that of beauty. There are two great classes of moral qualities; one is of the high and the great virtues, which require extraordinary efforts, and is founded on dangers and sufferings; as heroism, magnanimity, contempt of pleasures, and contempt of death. These, as I have observed in a former lecture, excite in the spectator an emotion of sublimity and grandeur. The other class is chiefly of the social virtues; and such as are of a softer and gentler kind; compassion, mildness, friendship, and generosity. These raise in the beholder a sensation of pleasure, so much akin to that produced by beautiful external objects, that, though of a more dignified nature, it may, without impropriety, be classed under the same head.

Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 1780

"There has never been a spell on me before," the unicorn said. She shivered long and deep. "There has never been a world in which I was not known."
"I know exactly how you feel," Schmendrick said eagerly. The unicorn looked at him out of dark, endless eyes, and he smiled nervously and looked at his hands. "It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is," he said. "There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that unicorns when time was young, could tell the difference 'twixt the two - the false shining and the true, the lips' laugh and the heart's rue." His quiet voice lifted as the sky grew lighter, and for a moment the unicorn could not hear the bars whining, or the soft ringing of the harpy's wings.
"I think you are my friend," she said. "Will you help me?"
"If not you, no one," the magician answered. "You are my last chance."

Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Is research on pride and error too humbling? Surely we can acknowledge the hard truth of our human limits and still sympathize with the deeper message that people are more than machines. Our subjective experiences are the stuff of our humanity - and our art and our music, our enjoyment of friendship and love, our mystical and religious experiences.

The cognitive and social psychologists who explore illusory thinking are not out to remake us into logical machines. They know that intuition and feeling not only enrich human experience but are also and important source of creative ideas. They add, however, the humbling reminder that our susceptibility to error also makes clear the need for disciplined training of the mind. Norman Cousins called this “the biggest truth of all about learning: that its purpose is to unlock the human mind and to develop it into an organ capable of thought - conceptual thought, analytical thought, sequential thought.”

Research on error and illusion in social judgment reminds us to “judge not” - to remember, with a dash of humility, our potential for misjudgment. It also encourages us not to feel intimidated by the arrogance of true believers-people who fail to appreciate their own potential for bias and error. We humans are wonderfully intelligent yet fallible creatures, having dignity but not deity.

Such humility and distrust of human authority is at the heart of both religion and science. No wonder many of the founders of modern science were religious people whose convictions predisposed them to be humble before nature and skeptical of human authority. Science always involves an interplay between intuition and rigorous test, between creative hunch and skepticism. To sift reality from this illusion requires both open-minded curiosity and hard-headed rigour. This perspective could prove to be a good attitude for approaching all of life: to be critical but not cynical, curious but not gullible, open, but not exploitable.

Social psychology textbook

At the suggestion of a friend, I went to see a psychiatrist for a very, very minor problem with insomnia. Ten years later, on my final visit, the doctor asked me if there were any personal questions I wanted to ask him. It seemed a little risky to open a door into his private life - what if I learned something that caused me to reevaluate his judgement? - so I asked if his view of a successful course of therapy had changed over the years of his practice.
        He thought for a minute and then said, "I've always felt that the goal was to help the patient form a successful relationship: committed, mature, and healthy. For years I thought that had to be a relationship with another person. Now I see that for some people it can be with something else: a dog, to name the obvious. Or an athletic pursuit or a musical instrument."
        I found this a satisfactory answer, one that reinforced my image of him as wise, tolerant, and kind. Still, I was happy that he'd helped me form a relationship with another person. This had to be the preferred outcome, no matter what he'd said.
        I didn't give his words too much more thought until I went to visit a friend in San Francisco, a tall, charming man I've known for decades. He is someone who has never, to my knowledge, been involved in a relationship, long-term or short. I admire many things about him, but I've always felt there must be something unresolved or emotionally tormented in him.
        I was staying in a bedroom on the upper floor of his apartment, and in the middle of the night I was awakened by music. I recognized it as one of the Bach suites for solo cello, played imperfectly but with a purity that gave it a new, almost eerie beauty. My friend often talked about the cello, but I'd never heard him play. Sitting up in bed, listening to him make music with such haunting intensity and passion, solely for the pleasure it gave him, I was reminded of what my shrink had said, and I felt certain that my friend knew more about love and commitment than I had ever learned.

Steven McCauley, in O Magazine (Feb 2004)

The following morning, I should again greet the dawn, anxious to discover new delights, for I am sure that, for those who have eyes which really see, the dawn of each day must be a perpetually new revelation of beauty...

I who am blind can give one hint to those who see -- one admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense: glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides.

But of all the senses, I am sure that sight must be the most delightful.

Helen Keller, Three Days to See