Come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me and has failed.
Interpretation
This quote reflects resilience and the celebration of survival despite daily challenges.
Lucille Clifton's quote encapsulates the essence of resilience and triumph over adversity. It highlights the constant struggles and challenges that life presents, yet emphasizes the importance of celebrating survival and the strength it takes to overcome obstacles. Each day offers its battles, but the act of celebrating signifies a recognition of one's perseverance and the refusal to be defeated by life's trials.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming challenges, one might quote Clifton to inspire others.
I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me.
You might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.
won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.
If i should enter the house and speak with my own voice, at last, about its awful furnitutre, pulling apart the covering over the dusty bodies; the randy father, the husband holding ice in his hand like a blessing, the mother bleeding into herself and the small imploding girl, i say if i should walk into that web, who will come flying after me, leaping tall buildings? you?
blessing the boats (at saint maryβs) may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that
I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired.
Life by the yard is hard; by the inch it's a cinch. Each of us can be true for just one day--and then one more and then one more after that--until we've lived a lifetime guided by the Spirit, a lifetime close to the Lord, a lifetime of good deeds and righteousness.
It is only when a woman is economically empowered that she can negotiate at household level with her husband about the number of children that body of hers can have.
I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.
My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism.
Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.
When I die I'm going to dance first in all the galaxies...I'm gonna play and dance and sing.
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