Even when you look for it, you're never prepared for it.
Bill WattersonRead
I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became a part of who I am.
Interpretation
Experiencing loss can shape our identity and understanding of life instead of simply being something to overcome.
In this quote, Gerald Lawson Sittser reflects on the profound impact that the loss of loved ones has on an individual. Rather than trying to erase or get over the grief, he emphasizes the importance of integrating that loss into one’s life, likening it to soil that absorbs decaying matter, highlighting that such experiences contribute to the formation of our identity and how we perceive the world.
In practice
In a memorial speech, honoring the memory of a loved one.
Even when you look for it, you're never prepared for it.
Hey, look at this!" He holds up a glistening, perfect pearl about the size of a pea. "You know, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls," he says earnestly to Finnick. "No, it doesn't," says Finnick dismissively. But I crack up, remembering that's how a clueless Effie Trinket presented us to the people of the Capitol last year, before anyone knew us. As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain.
I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness.
The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four -the years turn dry as leaves.
If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.
Determine to live life with flair and laughter.
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