Eventually we all have to accept full and total responsibility for our actions, everything we have done, and have not done.
Interpretation
We must acknowledge and take responsibility for our choices and inactions in life.
This quote emphasizes the importance of personal accountability. Hubert Selby, Jr. suggests that as individuals, we must confront the consequences of our actions, both the things we have done and the opportunities we have failed to seize. Accepting responsibility is crucial to personal growth and understanding the impact of our decisions on ourselves and others.
In practice
In a self-improvement seminar, one might use this quote to encourage participants to take charge of their lives.
Being an artist doesnβt take much, just everything you got. Which means, of course, that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But itβs no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it, I transcend all this meaningless gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission.
Obviously, I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is giving, not getting.
There's a sorrow and pain in everyone's life, but every now and then there's a ray of light that melts the loneliness in your heart and brings comfort like hot soup and a soft bed.
Sometimes we have the absolute certainty there's something inside us that's so hideous and monstrous that if we ever search it out we won't be able to stand looking at it. But it's when we're willing to come face to face with that demon that we face the angel.
Trust no one, not even the finest saint who ever walked this earth, ignore him, if he hinders your sight of Jesus Christ.
"Great suffering has a silver-lining that we can be grateful for, because it builds up a human being and puts him or her within reach of self-knowledge."
It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.
Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness.
A well-worn adage advises those who set out upon a great enterprise to count the cost, yet some of the greatest enterprises have succeeded because the people who undertook them did not count the cost.
The fact that knowledge endlessly recedes as the investigator is about to grasp it is what constitutes at the same time his torment and happiness.
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