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.
Consider all of the possibilities for positive global progress if we utilized nonviolence as the central value of our culture, encompassing our law enforcement and labor practices, which currently include people in numerous nations working for inhumane wages in unhealthy conditions.
As more and more women, men and young people raise their voices and become active in local government, and more local leaders take action for the safety of women and girls, change happens.
The whole Lower Ninth Ward hasn't really recovered, but I feel a good spirit in my heart that something is going on - music is coming back slowly.
Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation's out of breath. We ain't running no more.
[A] new generation, innocent of the divisions of the Cold War, this coming-of-age. ... If its members do not feel the urgency to escape the nuclear danger that some of its parents felt, neither has it developed the deep attachment to nuclear arms also often found among their parents, including most of the governing class. ... The call for abolition should therefore be, among other things, a call from an older generation to younger one.
Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.
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