I was surprised, as always, be how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.
Interpretation
Leaving can be a liberating experience that opens up new possibilities in life.
In this quote, Jack Kerouac reflects on the surprising ease and positive emotions associated with the act of leaving, suggesting that departing from familiar surroundings can lead to a new world full of opportunities. This perspective highlights the transformative power of change and the excitement that comes with embracing the unknown.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth, one might say, 'As Jack Kerouac said, leaving can open up a world rich with new possibilities.'
Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that cramp they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.
I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.
My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.
The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories.
Holding up my purring cat to the moon. I sighed.
It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.
We are 25 years too late. If the object is to avoid dangerous change, we've already had it. The object now is to avoid really dangerous change.
The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day
Unless we share with each other we gotta start makin' changes
Flow in the living moment. β We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and youβll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
I am for lifting everyone off the social bottom. In fact, I am for doing away with the social bottom altogether.
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