Egos Anonymous Reflections — Egos Anonymous

"Oops" For the past three months, the daily reflections posted here have included quotes sourced with the help of AI. While every quote was intended to be accurate and attributable, we have found that many quotes don't hold up to veri

Wendy Etter 5/20/26 Wendy Etter 5/20/26

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"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince Much of what we manage, evaluate, and track is visible—quantifiable, comparable, availa

Wendy Etter 5/19/26 Wendy Etter 5/19/26

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"But one day, I know, it will be otherwise." —Jane Kenyon, Otherwise The full poem this closes is a meditation on an ordinary morning—getting up, eating breakfast, the dog following at her heels. Kenyon wrote it knowing she was

Wendy Etter 5/18/26 Wendy Etter 5/18/26

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"It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life can only be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards." —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals (1843) Self-will tends to live backward—

Wendy Etter 5/17/26 Wendy Etter 5/17/26

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"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." —Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity Change tends to activate self-will. When things shift—relationships, circumstances, the grou

Wendy Etter 5/16/26 Wendy Etter 5/16/26

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"on the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree" —W.S. Merwin, Place Self-will tends toward the strategic. It asks whether an action will pay off, whether the investment will be worth it, whether what we are doing will

Wendy Etter 5/15/26 Wendy Etter 5/15/26

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"As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky and water bears them" —Denise Levertov, The Avowal Most of us were not taught to float. We were taught to keep moving—to stroke, to kick, to maintain effort so as not to sink. The idea tha

Wendy Etter 5/14/26 Wendy Etter 5/14/26

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"Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith." —Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith Self-will often wants certainty before it will commit. It waits for proof, for resolution, for clarity that seems reliable. In the

Wendy Etter 5/13/26 Wendy Etter 5/13/26

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"The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere." —Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea There is a particular tiredness that comes not from doing too much but from maintaining a version of ourselves that doesn't quite m

Wendy Etter 5/12/26 Wendy Etter 5/12/26

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"I dwell in Possibility—" —Emily Dickinson, poem 466 The ego tends to dwell in probability—in what is likely, what is safe, what can be reasonably expected given past experience. Possibility, in that framework, gets measured agai

Wendy Etter 5/11/26 Wendy Etter 5/11/26

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"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite." —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake was not describing a mystical technique or a special state. He was describing wh

Wendy Etter 5/10/26 Wendy Etter 5/10/26

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"Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul." —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Marcus Aurelius wrote this as emperor of Rome—someone for whom external circumstances were rarely quiet or untroubled

Wendy Etter 5/9/26 Wendy Etter 5/9/26

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"The world is charged with the grandeur of God." —Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur Hopkins wrote this in 1877, in a world that was rapidly industrializing and, he felt, losing touch with something essential. The charge he de

Wendy Etter 5/8/26 Wendy Etter 5/8/26

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"All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you." —Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower These lines appear as a kind of scripture in Butler's novel—spare, almost liturgical, impossible to argue with. Everything

Wendy Etter 5/7/26 Wendy Etter 5/7/26

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"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." —Albert Camus, Return to Tipasa The discovery Camus describes did not come during a comfortable season. It came in depth—in the difficulty

Wendy Etter 5/6/26 Wendy Etter 5/6/26

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"Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another." —Toni Morrison, Beloved There may be moments when something loosens—a long-held pattern softens, a defense drops, a burden is set down. These mo

Wendy Etter 5/5/26 Wendy Etter 5/5/26

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"All real living is meeting." —Martin Buber, I and Thou Buber spent much of his life thinking about the difference between two kinds of relating. In one, the other person becomes an object—something to manage, evaluate, or move a

Wendy Etter 5/4/26 Wendy Etter 5/4/26

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"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." —Carl Jung, letter to Fanny Bowditch, 1916 Much of our energy can go outward—toward what others are doing, what circumstances are offering, what the world owes us or threatens

Wendy Etter 5/3/26 Wendy Etter 5/3/26

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"The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from God." —Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart The sense of distance from something larger than ourselves may not be a description of reality. It

Wendy Etter 5/2/26 Wendy Etter 5/2/26

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"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?" —George Eliot, Middlemarch Self-will can make life feel like a largely private project—something to get right, to manage well, to secure against futu

Wendy Etter 5/1/26 Wendy Etter 5/1/26

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