An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the lasting impact of relationships on our identity and life choices.
Arthur Golden's quote emphasizes the concept of interconnectedness and the influence that others have on our lives. He contrasts modern beliefs in individual choice with an older view that acknowledges the enduring marks left by our experiences and relationships, suggesting that while we make choices, we are also shaped by those who have come into contact with us throughout our lives.
In practice
Using this quote in a workshop about personal development to illustrate how our relationships shape us.
We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I never imagined such a thing could occur within our very selves.
As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.
For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.
The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.
He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.
I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.
Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to.
His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants' hall.
If you try to create a type, you may end with nothing. If you do a good job of creating an individual, you may succeed at creating a type.
I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.
Freedom exists only with power.
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