If we don't stop somewhere, if we don't accept an unhappy compromise, unhappy for both sides, if we don't learn how to unhappily coexist and contain our burned sense of injustice - if we don't learn how to do that, we end up in a doomed state.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of accepting compromises to avoid a detrimental state of conflict.
Amos Oz emphasizes the necessity of navigating conflicts through acceptance and compromise. He suggests that failing to find a way to coexist amid disagreements leads to a deteriorating situation for all parties involved. By learning to accept and manage our sense of injustice, we can avoid the doom that comes from unresolved tensions.
In practice
During a team meeting to resolve issues, I quoted Amos Oz to emphasize the need for compromise.
When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf-life in some corner on an out-of-the-way library somehwere in Reykjavik, Valladolid or Vancouver.
Two children of same cruel parent look at one another and see in each other the image of the cruel parent or the image of their past oppressor. This is very much the case between Jew and Arab: It's a conflict between two victims.
Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.
Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.
I have seen for the first time in 100 years of conflict, the two peoples - the Israeli people and the Palestinian people - are ahead of their leaderships.
She had not wanted him to but had let him have his way because ever since she was a child she had generally yielded before anyone with strong willpower, especially if it was a man, not because she was naturally submissive, but because strong male willpower gave her a feeling of safety and trust, together with acceptance and a desire to give in.
Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.
It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'.
We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.
When I was five, I am told, and asked what my favorite things in the world were, I answered, smoked salmon and Bach.
Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
My own being can be judged by the depths I reach in making these historical origins my own.
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