What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch--with an electric hiss and cry--this speckled mineral sphere, our present world.
Interpretation
Embracing the present moment in life can lead to profound experiences and sensations.
In this quote, Annie Dillard emphasizes the importance of being fully present in our lives and appreciating the richness of our experience. She uses vivid imagery to convey how awakening to life's moments can feel both electric and transformative, urging us to recognize and savor the beauty of our existence in the here and now.
In practice
In a motivational speech about mindfulness, one might say this quote to inspire the audience to appreciate each moment.
Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth. A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere. This is not science; it is merely metaphor. And the landscape in which the protein "starts" shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water.
Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone.
Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.
To crank myself up I stood on a jack and ran myself up. I tightened myself like a bolt. I inserted myself in a vise-clamp and wound the handle till the pressure built. I drank coffee in titrated doses. It was a tricky business, requiring the finely tuned judgment of a skilled anesthesiologist. There was a tiny range within which coffee was effective, short of which it was useless, and beyond which, fatal.
The world did not have me in mind; it had no mind. It was a coincidental collection of things and people, of items, an I myself was one such item...the things in the world did not necessarily cause my overwhelming feelings; the feelings were inside me, beneath my skin, behind my ribs, withing my skull. They were even, to some extent, under my control.
Most people have stereo vision, so why belittle that very, very important element of our existence?
What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.
Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.
One of the things I'm trying to do over and over again in my books is create new mythologies, create new ways to understand the complexity of the world. I think what mythology does is impress upon chaotic experience the patterns, hierarchies and shapes which allow us to interpret the chaos and make fresh sense of it.
I must go in, the fog is rising.
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