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.
But what we can never do is change the story that has made us what we are. It's a story completely dictated by the accumulation of life's manifold complexities—its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what has happened to us.
My life will be the best illustration of all my work.
They keep coming up new all the time - things to perplex you, you know. You settle one question and there's another right after. There are so many things to be thought over and decided when you're beginning to grow up. It keeps me busy all the time thinking them over and deciding what's right. It's a serious thing to grow up, isn't it, Marilla?
Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning.
Life is filled with potential that is truly unfathomable. At last we are coming to see the enormous power it possesses. That is why we must never write anyone off. In particular, we mustn’t put boundaries on our own potential. In most cases, our so-called limitations are nothing more than our own decision to limit ourselves.
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