It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.
Interpretation
Working with time allows us to value every experience, including pain, rather than wasting our moments.
This quote by Ursula K. Le Guin emphasizes the importance of aligning ourselves with the natural flow of time and recognizing that every experience, even the painful ones, contributes to our growth and understanding. By accepting time as an ally rather than an adversary, we can find purpose and value in every moment, avoiding feelings of wastefulness and finding lessons in our struggles.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a meditation session to highlight acceptance of life's experiences.
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. βDo they expect students not to be anarchists?β he said. βWhat else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
O God, help me to win, but in thy wisdom if thou willest me not to win, then O God, make me a good loser.
Yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not yet come; we must live each day as if it were our last so that when God calls us we already, and prepared, to die with a clean heart.
Few among men are they who cross to the further shore. The others merely run up and down the bank on this side.
The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.
[I] learned ... that friends are a good source of food and soul when one has not yet gotten the hang of cooking or living (as opposed to dying) alone. That nothing-not booze, not love, not sex, not work, not moving from state to state-will make the past disappear. Only time and patience heal things. I learned that cutting up your arms in an attempt to make the pain move from inside to outside, from soul to skin, is futile. That death is a cop-out. I tried all of these things.
If you're gonna make connections which are innovative... you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.
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