" Is there a middle way between hope and despair? It is the
unconditional yes to the given of life that our needs are sometimes met
and sometimes not, that life is not always predictable, that things do not
always come out the way we want. Between the extremes of hope and
despair there flies a wise owl. He is the one that lands not in the marshes
of wishful thinking nor in the desert of despondency but on the tree of
life, the reality of how things are in the human world. We can sit with
him on any branch of mindfulness. There we feel a sense of divine
balance and we realize that our unconditional yes was how we aligned
ourselves to it. "

― David Richo , When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships