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You can't care for others effectively unless you first care for yourself. You are the number one; never demote yourself. If you refuse to exercise, take medicine, get psychotherapy and care for yourself, you won't be very helpful to other people who need you. If your father has Alzheimer's and you micromanage his life without regard to yourself, you will likely pay a price. Caretakers have a higher mortality if they don't make time for themselves. In addition, their other relationships will often suffer.

Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbors and thus honor their right as well.

It follows that, in today's multicultural world, the truly reliable path to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies or sympathies: it must be rooted in self-transcendence.