Your children are grown and your career has slowed down - all the stuff that took up so much attention is gone, and you're left with expansive time and space. You have to reimagine who you are and what life is about.
Interpretation
As life changes, especially in later years, one must redefine their identity and purpose.
This quote by Jessica Lange reflects on the transitions that occur in life, particularly when children grow up and careers wind down. It emphasizes the importance of using this newfound time and space to explore a new sense of self and to contemplate the meaning of life, suggesting that the end of one chapter can lead to the opportunity for renewal and discovery.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth during retirement.
Be present. I would encourage you with all my heart just to be present. Be present and open to the moment that is unfolding before you. Because, ultimately, your life is made up of moments. So don't miss them by being lost in the past or anticipating the future.
For me, acting was always a way to explore emotions - to dip into the well and really try to reach rock bottom down there. That was the most exciting part of it. I hadn't found anything that really allowed me to do that until I came upon acting.
We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.
Growing up in New Orleans, I was always the only black kid, or one of two, on the school soccer team. While I was always conscious of this status, what took precedent was my unfettered love of the game.
We need comprehensive immigration reform. Dr. King wouldn't be pleased at all to know that there are millions of people living in the shadow, living in fear in places like Georgia and Alabama.
Were all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all.
Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.
Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.
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