This time is difficult. Wait for me. We will live it out vividly. Give me your small hand: we will rise and suffer, we will feel, we will rejoice. We are once more the pair who lived in bristling places, in harsh nests in the rock. This time is difficult. Wait for me with a basket, with a shovel, with your shoes and your clothes. Now we need each other, not only for the carnations' sake, not only to look for honey — we need our hands to wash with, to make fire.
Interpretation
In challenging times, love and shared support can help us endure and thrive together.
Pablo Neruda's quote speaks to the resilience found in love during difficult times. It highlights the importance of companionship and mutual support in facing life's challenges, suggesting that together, we can navigate hardships with strength and joy. The imagery of shared tasks and the need for each other not only for minor comforts but for essential survival showcases that true partnership thrives even in adversity.
In practice
During a group discussion on relationships, this quote can illustrate the importance of mutual support during tough times.
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?
I want to see the thirst inside the syllables I want to touch the fire in the sound: I want to feel the darkness of the cry. I want words as rough as virgin rocks.” - Verb.
Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.
And here am I, budding among the ruins with only sorrow to bite on, as if weeping were a seed and I the earth's only furrow.
Once more I am the silent one who came out of the distance wrapped in cold rain and bells: I owe to earth's pure death the will to sprout.
I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.
Love and a cough cannot be hid.
My heart is burning with love. All I can see is this flame. My heart is burning with passion, like waves on an ocean. I'm at home, wherever I am. And in the room of lovers, I can see with closed eyes the beauty that dances. Behind the veils, intoxicated with love, I too dance the rhythm of this moving world.
People have often asked me whether what I know about love has spoiled it for me. And I just simply say, 'Hardly.' You can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and then when you sit down and eat that cake, you can still feel that joy.
The task is not to perfect yourself, it's to perfect your love.
The hardest times to choose love become the very times that you can most grow spiritually.
In school, they would tell you that life wouldn’t come to you; you had to go out and make it your own. But when it came to love, the message for girls seemed to be this: Don’t. Don’t go after what you want. Wait. Wait to be chosen, as if only in the eye of another could one truly find value. The message was confusing and infuriating. It was a shell game with no actual pea under the rapidly moving cups.
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