And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the idea that there is an elusive, ultimate goal in life that can never truly be attained.
In this quote, Jack Kerouac reflects on the human condition of pursuing dreams and aspirations that often seem just out of reach. He suggests that the pursuit of this 'last thing' — the ultimate achievement or understanding — is a fundamental part of life, driving people to continue living and hoping even when the destination remains unattainable. This highlights the journey of life as more significant than the actual accomplishment, as the act of seeking can itself provide meaning.
In practice
During a motivational speech about ambition and life goals.
Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that cramp they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.
I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.
My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.
The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories.
Holding up my purring cat to the moon. I sighed.
It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.
Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is.
They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.
But where, after we have made the great decision to leave the security of childhood and move on into the vastness of maturity, does anybody ever feel completely at home?
Ellen had said that her mother was afraid of the ocean, that it was too cold and too big. The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel.
It's much easier for me to make major life, multi-million dollar decisions, than it is to decide on a carpet for my front porch. That's the truth.
But she projected vitality - you knew that she was there.
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