Things have changed, ofcourse. There are counsellors at the ready. Kindness and understanding. Life is harder for some, we're told. Not their fault, even if the blows are purely imgainery. Felt just as keenly by the recipient, or the non recipient, as the case may be. But good use can be made of everything, if you are willing.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the complexities of life and the importance of kindness and understanding towards others.
Alice Munro reflects on the changes in society where resources such as counseling are available to help individuals cope with life's challenges. She acknowledges that while some struggles may seem imaginary to outsiders, they are nonetheless deeply felt by those experiencing them, highlighting the need for compassion and the possibility of turning adversity into something beneficial if one is open to it.
In practice
During a motivational speech, I could use this quote to emphasize the importance of understanding others' hardships.
Sometimes our connection is frayed, it is in danger, it seems almost lost. Views and streets deny knowledge of us, the air grows thin. Wouldn't we rather have a destiny to submit to, than, something that claims us, anything, instead of such flimsy choices, arbitrary days?
I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.
Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
I just believed it easily, the way you might believe and in fact remember that you once had another set of teeth, now vanished but real in spite of that. Until one day, one day when I may even have been in my teens, I knew with a dim sort of hole in my insides that now I didn't believe it anymore.
You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing.
A story is not like a road to follow... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside it altered by being viewed from these windows.
Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.
I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.'
I became a man in New York. New York made me the musician that I am and the person that I am, so it's impossible for me to say I regret having lived there.
why can't you see i'm a kid', said the kid. Why try to make me like you? Why are you hurt when I don't cuddle? Why do you sigh when I splash through a puddle? Why do you scream when I do what I did? Im a kid.
His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him.
He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.
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