In every city, town, and country, there live people long ignored or forgotten. The busy pace of daily life makes our own needs seem so great that often we have little energy to consider the needs of others.

Those who have been forgotten tend to stay forgotten. This is a tragic condition—not only for those who are forgotten, but also for those of us who are forgetting. For in frantically living to meet our own needs, we forget our own greatest need.

One relearns this need when fate brings him face to face with a forgotten soul. For the forgotten ones have within them a great healing power: the power to do what all of our exertions cannot—the power to simplify and slow down the world. For example, who can spend time with a child in need without feeling the need to rethink priorities? Those with great needs bring perspective to our own—which is to say, our own greatest need is to be alive to theirs.”

– From the Preface to Angels Among Us, The Arbinger Institute