Can one drown in one's element... If fish can drown in water, can human beings suffocate in air?
Interpretation
The quote questions the nature of one's environment and the idea that even creatures adapted to their surroundings can suffer or perish within it.
In this thought-provoking quote, Salman Rushdie explores the paradox of existence, suggesting that even beings perfectly suited to their environment, much like fish in water, can find themselves in peril. It prompts reflection on how people can feel trapped or suffocated by elements of life that are typically seen as essential or nurturing, such as their surroundings, society, or expectations.
In practice
In a discussion about mental health and feeling trapped, this quote can illustrate how one's surroundings can impact their well-being.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is, therefore, Mukti - freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery.
The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.
Nothing else matters much...not wealth, nor learning, nor even health...without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.
Human civilization is not something achieved against nature; it is rather the outcome of the working of the innate qualities of man.
If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.
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