To be a loving person is to wrestle with a profoundly improbable idea: that however modest our position in society might be, however much we may have been maltreated in the past, however mesmerised we are by the deplorable behaviour of powerful individuals, however shy and frail we are, we are constantly capable of causing other people significant hurt. Alain de Botton in A More Loving World: How to increase compassion, kindness and joyCreators & Guests Joe Loh - Host This is the second of an ongoing series by Joe: short reflections on quotes he captured and shared with Ali and Sam while reading (usually books on spirituality, psychology, consciousness, religion etc). Joe is writing over at https://joeloh.substack.com/ and it's genuinely sizzling stuff. You can tell he read Hunter S Thompson and Kerouac as a youngster, and since then I'm assuming he's read other stuff that sounds more mature, because his writing is kind of both of those things. It's present and truthful, and entirely unsentimental, but it has feelings in it. That link again: https://joeloh.substack.com/ - Sam Image courtesy of Craig https://wish-art.blog/gallery/____________________________________More on the quote's source, A More Loving World: How to increase compassion, kindness and joy at https://www.theschooloflife.com/shop/a-more-loving-world/ An extract of the book is available at https://assets.theschooloflife.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/04143544/A-More-Loving-World_extract.pdfAbout the author of today's quote:Alain de Botton FRSL (/dəˈbɒtən/; born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British author and public speaker. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004), and The Architecture of Happiness (2006).He co-founded The School of Life in 2008 and Living Architecture in 2009.[1][2] In 2015, he was awarded "The Fellowship of Schopenhauer", an annual writers' award from the Melbourne Writers Festival, for that work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_BottonMore great quotes from Alain de Botton at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alain_de_BottonTranscript:That's Alain de Botton. And that really struck me because I think I'd always given myself an out. That it didn't really matter what I did. That I was a small and insignificant person.And as it says 'however mesmerized we are by the deplorable behaviour of powerful individuals...'  It alwa