To grow up is to find the small part you are playing in the extraordinary drama written by somebody else.
Interpretation
Growing up involves recognizing your unique role in a larger narrative created by others.
This quote suggests that maturation is not just about age or physical development, but about understanding one's place and contribution within the grander scheme of life, where everyone plays a role in a story that is partly authored by external circumstances, experiences, and societal influences. It implies a sense of humility and recognition that one's life is intertwined with the lives and stories of others, highlighting the complexity of existence.
In practice
In a graduation speech, one might use this quote to encourage students to find their place in the world.
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
Longevity, for a columnist, is a simple proposition: Once you start, you don't stop. You do it until you die or can no longer put a sentence together. It has always been my intention to die at my desk, although my most cherished ambition is to outlive the estate tax.
Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.
I think of my life as a unity of circles. Some are concentric, others overlap, but they all connect in some way. Sometimes the connections don't happen for years. But when they do, I marvel. As in a shimmering kaleidoscope, familiar patterns keep unfolding
Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.
I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar.
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