The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.
Anna QuindlenRead
You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ... Your entire life ... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the personal responsibility and ownership we have over our own lives and experiences.
Anna Quindlen's quote reflects the profound truth that each individual is uniquely responsible for their own existence and the way they live it. It highlights that our lives encompass all aspects, including emotional, financial, and spiritual dimensions, suggesting that true fulfillment comes from recognizing and embracing this responsibility fully.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth.
The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.
The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.
I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
With reference to the younger generation..."If the experience of their exhausted, insomniac, dispirited elders makes them decide they'd prefer not to go straight from the classroom to the cubicle to the coffin, it doesn't mean they're lazy. It means they're sane."
Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.
I conveniently forgot to remember that people only have two hands, or, as another parent once said of having a third child, it's time for a zone defense instead of man-to-man.
Naps are nature's way of reminding you that life is nice, like a beautiful swinging hammock strung between birth and infinity.
Living your best life is your most important journey in life.
This is how it works _x000D_ You're young until you're not _x000D_ You love until you don't _x000D_ You try until you can't _x000D_ You laugh until you cry _x000D_ You cry until you laugh _x000D_ And everyone must breathe _x000D_ Until their dying breath.
The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled.
Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those "we'll go there next time" deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no "next time" because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision.
My whole life I've been a fraud. I'm not exaggerating. Pretty much all I've ever done all the time is try to create a certain impression of me in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired. It's a little more complicated than that, maybe. But when you come right down to it it's to be liked, loved. Admired, approved of, applauded, whatever. You get the idea.
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