Our chronic discomfort with ambiguity - which, ironically, is critical to both our creativity and the richness of our lives - leads us to lock down safe, comfortable, familiar interpretations, even if they are only partial representations of or fully disconnected from reality.
Interpretation
We often resist uncertainty, seeking comfort in familiar interpretations that may not reflect reality.
Maria Popova's quote highlights the human tendency to avoid ambiguity, which can inhibit our creativity and limit the richness of our experiences. By clinging to safe and familiar interpretations, we risk missing out on a deeper understanding of reality, which often requires us to embrace uncertainty and the unknown.
In practice
During a workshop on creative thinking, one might use this quote to stress the importance of embracing uncertainty.
Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity. Ours is a culture that measures our worth as human beings by our efficiency, our earnings, our ability to perform this or that. The cult of productivity has its place, but worshipping at its altar daily robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living.
Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.
You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes.
Disobey n:To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command
We are free to choose our actions, . . . but we are not free to choose the consequences of these actions.
I only wish I could write with both hands, so as not to forget one thing while I am saying another.
Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.
I read somewhere, one, that crying defies scientific explanation. Tears are only meant to lubricate the eyes. There is no real reason for tear glands to overproduce tears at the behest of emotion. I think we cry to release the animal parts of us without losing our humanity. Because inside of me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and, above all, towards life. And as hard as I try, I cannot kill it.
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