BURNOUT

From Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer

When I give something I do not possess, I give a false & dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is in reality, loveless - a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other's need to be cared for.

When the gift I give to the other is integral to my own nature, when it comes from a place of organic reality within me, it will renew itself - and me - even as I give it away. Only when I give something that does not grow within me do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.

- Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak