From the first time I heard Judy Collins sing "The Rose," I have been haunted by the line "It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance." It spoke to me of all the people whose lives have been derailed by one serious failure, people whose fondest hopes never worked out, and as a result they had lost the ability to hope, the courage to dream. Then one day in a souvenir shop in Venice, California, I found, of all things, a refrigerator magnet that gave me the answer to the song's lament. It read:
Dance as if no one was watching; love as if you'd never been hurt.
— Harold S. Kushner, Overcoming Life's Disappointments