...like overheard party conversation...

Some people who influence your life, clearly and straightforwardly say and do things to
teach
you
and
help you, and encourage you. Others have a more round-a-bout path -- you learn from them, too, if you're listening and can "dig" it -- they aren't directly engaged in Your priorities or enthusiasms, but they share theirs, along with their knowledge and stories and observations, aloud mostly because they like telling it.

And you can be entertained / enlightened or not -- you may absorb at will. Like crackers on a plate -- you can take one if you want to.

------------- The vagaries of fortune, the gratuitous bitchery, and random meanness people may encounter; whether an individual allows events and jerks to "beat them to death" psychologically, is partly in the individual's control (we can consciously choose our response) and partly not.

------------------------------------
[selection / "Ulysses"]

Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world...
...for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Off all the western stars, until I die...

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, --

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
-------------------
[Alfred Lord Tennyson,
from the poem "Ulysses"]
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