Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?" I do face facts," Meg said. They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.
Interpretation
Facing facts can be easier than facing people and their complexities.
In this quote, Meg expresses a common struggle between confronting objective truths and navigating interpersonal relationships. The idea is that while facts may seem straightforward, the emotional and social dynamics of dealing with people can be far more challenging, highlighting the complexity of human interactions and the difficulty in adjusting to both reality and social situations.
In practice
In a motivational speech about dealing with anxiety, this quote can illustrate the importance of facing personal challenges.
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.
To be totally without stress is to be dead.
Our house was littered with books- in the kitchen, under the beds, stuck between the couch pillows--far too many for her the ever finish. I suppose I thought if my grandmother kept up her interests, she wouldn't die; she'd have to stay around to finish the books she was so fond of. "I've got to get to the bottom of this one," she'd say, as if a book were no different from a pond or a lake. I thought she'd go on reading forever but it didn't work out that way.
Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone. Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him. He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance. Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that. He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.
So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance?
If someone really wants to hurt you, they'll find a way whatever. I don't want to live my life worrying about it.
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