Gaps don't/just happen./There is a/generative element/inside them,/a welling motion/ as when cold/waters shoulder/up through/warmer oceans./And where gaps/choose to widen,/coordinates warp,/even in places/constant since/the oldest maps.
Interpretation
Gaps in understanding or experiences are created intentionally and can lead to transformation.
This quote by Kay Ryan illustrates the idea that gaps or voids in our lives and understanding are not mere accidents but are generative forces that can lead to new insights and change. Just as cold water rising through warmer oceans creates movement and new patterns in nature, the gaps in our lives can disrupt the status quo and encourage growth and exploration, leading to new coordinations and perspectives, even in well-established circumstances.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about overcoming challenges in personal growth.
I simply want to celebrate the fact that right near your home, year in and year out, a community college is quietly - and with very little financial encouragement - saving lives and minds. I can’t think of a more efficient, hopeful or egalitarian machine, with the possible exception of the bicycle.
It seems like many people think that if you drive yourself crazy, then you can write. I’m absolutely not interested in that. It made sense to me to be as whole and well as I could be, and as happy. I wanted to see what a fortunate life would produce. What writing would come out of a mind that didn’t try to torment itself? What did I have to know? What did I have to do rather than what can I torment and bend myself into doing? What was the fruit on that tree?
The day misspent, the love misplaced, has inside it the seed of redemption. Nothing is exempt from resurrection.
Tenderness and Rot Tenderness and rot share a border. And rot is an aggressive neighbor whose iridescence keeps creeping over. No lessons can be drawn from this however. One is not two countries. One is not meat corrupting. It is important to stay sweet and loving.
If we're going to fight a disease, let's fight one of the most terrible diseases of all, indifference.
We look in our own backyard and say, 'How do we help at-risk families, at risk youth? How do we think through some of the problems affecting the Pacific Northwest and make some change there?'
I think that more diversity is a good thing, and fresh points of view articulated by people who are committed to excellence in journalism is a beneficial change in the American media landscape.
In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.
When we are headed the wrong way, the last thing we need is progress.
A life without change is not a life; it is a stagnant pool.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.