"There is in other words a difference
between having a friend and being a friend,
between having success and being successful,
between getting an education and becoming learned.

If we use knowledge, music, art, sports,
and eminently others -
if we use them just to enrich ourselves,
then paradoxically we impoverish ourselves,
at least at our very core.

For all things then becomes as clothes:
they cover but they do not touch or develop our inner being,
and we become as those who believe
they can only become visible
when something visible covers the surface.

But if we give ourselves to art, music, sports, knowledge,
and eminently to others,
then we experience that biblical truth that
"he who loses his life shall find it,"
shall find life being fulfilled,
and find that joy is self-fulfillment,
self-fulfillment is joy.

For joy is to escape from the prison of selfhood
and to enter by love
into union with the life
that dwells and sings
within the essence of every other thing
and in the core of our own souls.

Joy is to feel the doors of the self fly open
into a wealth that is endless
because none of it is ours
and yet it all belongs to us."

~ William Sloane Coffin