Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?
Interpretation
The quote prompts reflection on the nature of life choices and the societal roles we adopt.
Jiddu Krishnamurti's quote encourages individuals to critically examine their life paths and the societal expectations surrounding adulthood. He raises concerns about the conventional trajectory of getting married, becoming parents, and getting trapped in the mundane routines of work or household chores, leading to a sense of unfulfilled potential and stagnation. This introspection challenges us to think beyond societal norms and seek a more meaningful existence.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about life choices at a graduation ceremony.
The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.
If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.
If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it.
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.
The past is always tense, the future perfect.
Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.
Here we go mother on the shipless ocean. Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.
I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.
It's a curse - this not wanting to look on naked realities. Until the war, life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. I do not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy.
Life is bigger than processes and overflows and dwarfs them.
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