Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come and seek me out, we'd talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the shared experience of depression and the importance of connection with others who feel similarly.
Wole Soyinka expresses a realization that upon leaving a situation, he encountered individuals who shared his feelings of depression and pessimism. This highlights the commonality of struggles with mental health and emphasizes the significance of seeking out connections with others who face similar challenges, fostering understanding and support towards a better future.
In practice
In a mental health awareness event, this quote could highlight the importance of community support.
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
A war, with its attendant human suffering, must, when that evil is unavoidable, be made to fragment more than buildings: It must shatter the foundations of thought and re-create. Only in this way does every individual share in the cataclysm and understand the purpose of sacrifice.
Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself.
Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.
Women of color have always been kind of boxed in by the idea that the more you talk about the misogyny of your own community, the more you make that community look bad.
People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.
Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.
For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.