Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
Diane AckermanRead
Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?
Interpretation
The quote highlights the pain of lost memories, whether from a life fully lived or one full of unfulfilled potential.
Diane Ackerman's quote invites us to reflect on the deep sorrow associated with memoriesβthose lost from a life richly experienced and those that represent dreams never realized. It poses a poignant question about the nature of regret and the weight of what could have been, suggesting that both old and young individuals face their own forms of cruelty in confronting their pasts.
In practice
In a graduation speech to remind young adults to cherish their experiences and memories.
Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
We try to exile ourselves more and more from nature - not always consciously: We build houses; we dismiss nature; nature has to be outside, because we're inside. God forbid something like a cockroach comes inside, or some dust.
We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature can't completely satisfy that yearning.
Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.
American writer_x000D_ _x000D_ 1803-1882_x000D_ _x000D_ Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.
In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.
Do not view mountains from the scale of human thought.
The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.
He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God.
What I'm saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis.
It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
I'm afraid that in the United States of America today the prevailing doctrine of justification is not justification by faith alone. It is not even justification by good works or by a combination of faith and works. The prevailing notion of justification in our culture today is justification by death. All one has to do to be received into the everlasting arms of God is to die.
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