The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anais NinRead
Since desire always goes towards that which is our direct opposite, it forces us to love that which will make us suffer.
Interpretation
Desire often leads us to pursue things that ultimately cause us pain or suffering.
This quote by Anais Nin suggests that our desires tend to gravitate toward what is contrary to our well-being, enticing us to develop attachments to individuals or circumstances that may lead to our suffering. It highlights the paradox of human longing, where the pursuit of desire often results in emotional turmoil, reinforcing the complex interplay between love and pain in relationships.
In practice
In a discussion about the complexities of love and attachment, this quote could be used to illustrate the idea that what we desire may not be what is good for us.
The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anxiety is love's greatest killer, because it is like the stranglehold of the drowning.
We celebrate peace. Yet we pay no attention to the ways of curing aggression in human beings. And when one sees in psychoanalysis hostility disappearing as people conquer their fears, one wonders if the cure is not there.
The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.
We have been poisoned by fairy tales.
But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.
And on that evening when we grow older still we'll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we'll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.
Most people think everybody feels about them much more violently than they actually do; they think other people's opinions of them swing through great arcs of approval or disapproval.
My parents and I entered the U.S. legally, but when it was time for our visa extension, we were turned down. Returning to China meant imprisonment for my father and persecution for my family. We were days from being forced to live here illegally when we were granted political asylum. Other families are not so lucky.
A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this “In order to love you, I must make you something else”. That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recast you.
It never hurts to think too highly of a person; often they become ennobled and act better because of it.
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