This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.
Ellen GoodmanRead
Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe, aren't even aware of.
Interpretation
Traditions shape our thoughts and behaviors, often without us being consciously aware of their influence.
This quote by Ellen Goodman emphasizes the profound impact that traditions have on our lives, acting as unseen forces that guide our beliefs and actions. These deeply ingrained customs and practices often operate in our subconscious, subtly steering our decisions and perspectives, even when we cannot articulate their origins or significance.
In practice
This quote would be insightful during a discussion on cultural heritage and its impacts on identity.
This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.
The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.
Parents remain our touchstones, fellow travelers, even after death. They are both missing and present.
What do I want to take home from my summer vacation? Time. The wonderful luxury of being at rest. The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander. The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are. Summer is my period of grace.
My father used to say that if a man fools you once, he's a jerk. If he fools you twice, you're a jerk. Only he didn't use the word "jerk."
There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over - and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives.
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
LSD, yeah, the big parade β everybody's doin' it now. Take LSD, then you are a poet, an intellectual. What a sick mob. I am building a machine gun in my closet now to take out as many of them as I can before they get me.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
To be poor does not mean you lack the means to extend charity to another. You may lack money or food, but you have the gift of friendship to overwhelm the loneliness that grips the lives of so many.
I prefer unlucky things. Luck is vulgar. Who wants what luck would bring? I don't.
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