At times, impossible-seeming insight, distilled, crashes upon my consciousness, and I feel immense relief that people write, and write well, and think, and think deeply, and help us understand what it is to be:

""If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious."