Being someone who had had a very difficult childhood, a very difficult adolescence - it had to do with not quite poverty, but close. It had to do with being brought up in a family where no one spoke English, no one could read or write English. It had to do with death and disease and lots of other things. I was a little prone to depression.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on overcoming a challenging upbringing marked by adversity and emotional struggles.
Sherwin B. Nuland discusses his difficult childhood and adolescence, highlighting the impact of poverty, language barriers, and personal loss. He acknowledges the emotional toll these experiences had on him, including a predisposition to depression. Ultimately, the quote speaks to resilience in the face of adversity and the complexities of personal growth influenced by one's background.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming hardships, one might quote Nuland to illustrate personal resilience.
Where nothing in a person's earlier years lends itself to an old age devoted to continuing intellectual and physical pursuits, a late-life interest in Tolstoy or even crossword puzzles is unlikely to appear, no matter the urging by well-intentioned social workers or people like me who write books about it.
Where the despair of loneliness and poverty haunts every hour, the optimism to embark on new projects cannot find a place to alight on the brain's cortex. Poverty itself is an enormous obstacle to an enlightened and enlightening - not to say healthy - old age.
I think when you think of death as being part of the life cycle and recognize that death is an inevitability for our species because the world has to be renewed with each death, then the hope becomes when it is renewed it will be renewed by people on whom I have had some influence for good.
Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.
The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it. This is a form of hope that we can all achieve, and it is the most abiding of all. Hope resides in the meaning of what our lives have been.
The dignity we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives.
I knew I heard the doctor correctly. I didn't think he said something else, I didn't think for a second, 'Well maybe he didn't say it.' No, I knew I heard him! But I still couldn't comprehend... in my mind... in my soul... he just said, 'cancer.'
We who choose to surround ourselves_x000D_ with lives even more temporary than our_x000D_ own, live within a fragile circle;_x000D_ easily and often breached._x000D_ Unable to accept its awful gaps,_x000D_ we would still live no other way._x000D_ We cherish memory as the only_x000D_ certain immortality, never fully_x000D_ understanding the necessary plan.
I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I'd get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.
Nothing changed in my life since I work all the time," Pamuk said then. "I've spent 30 years writing fiction. For the first 10 years I worried about money and no one asked me how much money I made. The second decade I spent money and no one was asking me about that. And I've spent the last 10 years with everyone expecting to hear how I spend the money, which I will not do.
When something enters your life that is so big and so non-negotiable as catastrophic illness, you either go in denial for a while or ultimately you accept it and you make space for it. And in making space for it, you illuminate a lot of things that you normally don't have room for you simply just look at the world differently.
Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.