Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber:

The Query of Queries: Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said, ‘In the coming world, they will not ask me, “Why were you not Moses?” They will ask me “Why were you not Zusya?”’

Carl Rogers on the seven stages of change (cribbed from here, who cribbed it from Making Sense of Change Management by Esther Cameron and Mike Green):

One:

  • an unwillingness to communicate about self, only externals;
  • no desire for change;
  • feelings neither recognized nor owned;
  • problems neither recognized nor perceived.

Two:

  • expressions begin to flow;
  • feelings may be shown but not owned;
  • problems perceived but seen as external;
  • no sense of personal responsibility;
  • experience more in terms of the past not the present.

Three:

  • a little talk about the self, but only as an object;
  • expression of feelings, but in the past;
  • non-acceptance of feelings; seen as bad, shameful, abnormal;
  • recognition of contradictions;
  • personal choice seen as ineffective.

Four:

  • more intense past feelings;
  • occasional expression of current feelings;
  • distrust and fear of direct expression of feelings;
  • a little acceptance of feelings;
  • possible current experiencing;
  • some discovery of personal constructs;
  • some feelings of self-responsibility in problems;
  • close relationships seen as dangerous;
  • some small risk-taking.

Five:

  • feelings freely expressed in the present;
  • surprise and fright at emerging feelings;
  • increasing ownership of feelings;
  • increasing self-responsibility;
  • clear facing up to contradictions and incongruence.

Six:

  • previously stuck feelings experienced in the here and now;
  • the self seen as less of an object, more of a feeling;
  • some physiological loosening;
  • some psychological loosening – that is, new ways of seeing the world and the self;
  • incongruence between experience and awareness reduced.

Seven:

  • new feelings experienced and accepted in the present;
  • basic trust in the process;
  • self becomes confidently felt in the process;
  • personal constructs reformulated but much less rigid;
  • strong feelings of choice and self-responsibility.

Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster:

All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are. Up one day and down the next; morose and silent in the morning, laughing and cracking jokes at night. Harry had been low when he talked to Tom, but now that his business venture was in the works, he was flying high with me.