You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.
Cheryl StrayedRead
I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a different person, but back to the person I used to be—strong and responsible, clear-eyed and driven, ethical and good. And the PCT would make me that way. There, I’d walk and think about my entire life. I’d find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the desire for personal transformation and rediscovering one's true self through reflection and challenge.
In this quote, Cheryl Strayed expresses her intrinsic need to change and evolve back into a stronger and more responsible version of herself. She emphasizes that her journey on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) serves as a pivotal moment for introspection and personal growth, allowing her to reclaim the clarity and drive that she once possessed while distancing herself from the chaos of her past life.
In practice
During a motivational speech about resilience and transformation, one might reference this quote to inspire the audience.
You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.
The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna. The real work of deep grief is making a home there.
I walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle.
There is a path toward the light. The one that goes blink, blink, blink inside your chest when you know what you're doing is right. Listen to it. Trust it. Let it make you stronger than you are.
Each evening, I ached for the shelter of my tent, for the smallest sense that something was shielding me from the entire rest of the world, keeping me safe not from danger, but from vastness itself. I loved the dim, clammy dark of my tent, the cozy familiarity of the way I arranged my few belongings all around me each night.
Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.
The growth of trees and plants takes place so slowly that it is not easily seen. Daily we notice little change. But, in course of time, we see that a great change has taken place. So it is with grace. Sanctification is a progressive, lifelong work (Prov 4:18). It is an amazing work of God's grace and it is a work to be prayed for (Rom 8:27).
There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we take strong action now.
Costs are incurred whenever any group is treated as lesser or the other, whether they are women, racial, or religious minorities, or the LGBT.
Dreams have consequences. There is no turning back. A revolution is not a painless march to the gates of freedom and justice. It is a struggle between rage and hope, between the temptation to destroy and the desire to build. Its temperament is desperate. It is a tormented response to the past, to all that has happened, the recalled and unrecalled injustices - for the memory of a revolution reaches much further back than the memory of its protagonists.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world.
In this present culture, we need to find the means to work and live together with less aggression if we are to resolve the serious problems that afflict and impede us.
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