For
the world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only from
the standpoint of someone standing aside from it—as if it were quite
other than himself—and then trying to grasp it.

But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship on
the hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the
world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts—based on the
realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process.

Author: Alan W. Watts