Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder
Interpretation
Awareness can make challenges feel more difficult than ignorance.
This quote by Toni Morrison reflects the idea that once we gain awareness or knowledge of a difficult situation, the weight of that knowledge can heighten our struggles and emotional burden. Ignorance may shield us from hardship, but understanding the reality of our circumstances often brings its own set of challenges, making it harder to cope.
In practice
During a motivational speech about facing life's challenges.
There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history's rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one -- an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.
You looking good." "Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.
What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something.
An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.
Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself
One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to.
Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.
There is nothing more difficult than tactical maneuvering. The difficult consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain. Thus, to take a long and circuitous route after enticing the enemy out of the way, and though starting after him to contrive to reach the goal before him, shows knowledge of the artifice of deviation.
I think I can take responsibility for that in that I was the audience. I was the voice of sanity around whom all these crazies did their dance. And I reacted in the same way that a member of the audience would have reacted.
In the end I do respond to my own instincts. Sometimes they're successful, and obviously sometimes they're not. But you have to, I think, remain true to what you believe in.
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