I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of embracing life's uncertainties and being open to change and discovery.
Martin Buber suggests that there is no single, rigid way to live one's life, as circumstances and personal beliefs evolve over time. Instead of adhering to strict formulas, we should approach life as an adventure, maintaining a mindset of curiosity and awareness that allows for growth and exploration.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might quote Buber to illustrate the need for flexibility in one's beliefs.
When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.
Play is the exultation of the possible.
There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.
Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.
It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another...We must begin by doing away with this convention.
God dwells wherever man lets Him in.
Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
I'm inclined to reserve all judgement, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.
Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.
As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man.
Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
I delight to lodge in such temples as are not regularly kept closed. None of the gods reject me; they make me partner of their roof.
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