I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.
Interpretation
Life experiences teach us valuable lessons, and love can be understood in simple moments.
In this quote, Pablo Neruda reflects on the profundity of life's lessons learned through personal experiences, asserting that while he can only share his knowledge of love through the simplicity of a kiss, these experiences resonate universally among all people. It highlights the importance of lived experiences as sources of wisdom and connection.
In practice
During a life coaching session, I quoted Neruda to emphasize the importance of personal experiences.
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?
I want to see the thirst inside the syllables I want to touch the fire in the sound: I want to feel the darkness of the cry. I want words as rough as virgin rocks.” - Verb.
Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.
And here am I, budding among the ruins with only sorrow to bite on, as if weeping were a seed and I the earth's only furrow.
Once more I am the silent one who came out of the distance wrapped in cold rain and bells: I owe to earth's pure death the will to sprout.
I have named you queen. There are taller than you, taller. There are purer than you, purer. There are lovelier than you, lovelier. But you are the queen.
No sooner do we think we have assembled a comfortable life than we find a piece of ourselves that has no place to fit in.
When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.
I make such big efforts to forget things and I can't tell the story of my life because, thank God, I'm still living it.
Nobody turns down an invitation to the White House, but I’ve seen plenty of people turn down an invitation to fully live.
One thing I've heard that makes sense to me about grief is that there's this conception that it's a thing that you process, and then you're done processing it. But really it's not a thing that has an end, it's just what life is like now. You are living with this now, probably forever.
The beginning and the end are never really the journey of discovery for me. It is the middle that remains a puzzle until well into the writing. That's how life is most of the time, isn't it? You know where you are and where you hope to wind up. It's the getting there that's challenging.
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