You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.
Cheryl StrayedRead
Going down (descending), I realized, was like taking hold of the loose strand of yard on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote illustrates the cyclical nature of effort and loss in life, comparing progress to a sweater that can easily unravel.
Cheryl Strayed's quote reflects on the struggles and frustrations encountered during the journey of life, likening them to the metaphor of knitting a sweater only to see it unravel when one pulls on a loose thread. It reminds us that the achievements we make can feel fleeting, as the process of building something meaningful can also lead to its disintegration, highlighting the complexities of growth and loss.
Themes
LifeLossJourneyEffortGrowthChange
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a motivational speech to discuss the importance of perseverance.
More from Cheryl Strayed
All quotes →The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna. The real work of deep grief is making a home there.
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I walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle.
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There is a path toward the light. The one that goes blink, blink, blink inside your chest when you know what you're doing is right. Listen to it. Trust it. Let it make you stronger than you are.
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Each evening, I ached for the shelter of my tent, for the smallest sense that something was shielding me from the entire rest of the world, keeping me safe not from danger, but from vastness itself. I loved the dim, clammy dark of my tent, the cozy familiarity of the way I arranged my few belongings all around me each night.
Cheryl StrayedRead
Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.
Cheryl StrayedRead
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