Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
Alice WalkerRead
Part of my ancestry is Cherokee. And in that tradition, you become an adult when you're 52.
Interpretation
In Cherokee tradition, adulthood is recognized later in life, specifically at the age of 52.
Alice Walker's quote reflects on the Cherokee tradition which defines adulthood at the age of 52, suggesting that wisdom and maturity are gained through life experiences rather than earlier milestones. This perspective invites reflection on cultural values and the importance of understanding time and personal growth in different contexts.
In practice
During a cultural presentation, I shared this quote to illustrate different philosophies on adulthood.
Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.
On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.
I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.
How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?
One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.
He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.
The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.
There are only three possible endings -aren't there? - to any story: revenge, tragedy or forgiveness. That's it. All stories end like that.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
The mere absence of war is not peace.
When you deprive people of their right to live in dignity, to hope for a better future, to have control over their lives, when you deprive them of that choice, then you expect them to fight for these rights.
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