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.
And what if thou, sweet May, hast known_x000D_ _x000D_ Mishap by worm and blight;_x000D_ _x000D_ If expectations newly blown_x000D_ _x000D_ Have perished in thy sight;_x000D_ _x000D_ If loves and joys, while up they sprung,_x000D_ _x000D_ Were caught as in a snare;_x000D_ _x000D_ Such is the lot of all the young,_x000D_ _x000D_ However bright and fair.
Don't get up from the feast of life without paying for your share of it.
It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.
Life is like the harp string, if it is strung too tight it won't play, if it is too loose it hangs, the tension that produces the beautiful sound lies in the middle.
There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin.
Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.
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