The love which brings the right answer [to the question of how to respond to the other] is an exercise of justice and realism and really looking. The difficulty is to keep the attention fixed upon the real situation and to prevent it from returning surreptitiously to the self with consolations of self-pity, resentment, fantasy, and despair....It is a task to come to see the world as it is.

--Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (p.91)