We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.
I wanted us to share the sense that the number of wrong moves far exceeds the number of good moves, to share the frightening instability of the correct decision, to bond in being confounded.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the complexity and uncertainty of decision-making, highlighting that wrong choices are more common than right ones.
Aleksandar Hemon's quote suggests that in life, we often face a vast number of wrong decisions compared to the rare moments of making the right choice. It emphasizes the shared struggle of navigating through confusing choices, and how this turmoil can foster a bond between individuals who experience similar challenges in decision-making. The notion of being confounded reflects the inherent instability and anxiety in striving for correctness amidst uncertainty.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the challenges of making important life choices, this quote can illustrate the shared experiences of decision-making struggles.
More from Aleksandar Hemon
All quotes →I have two homes, like someone who leaves their hometown and/or parents and then establishes a life elsewhere. They might say that they're going home when they return to see old friends or parents, but then they go home as well when they go to where they live now. Sarajevo is home, Chicago is home.
I do have a sense of displacement as constant instability — the uninterrupted existence of everything that I love and care about is not guaranteed at all. I wait for catastrophes.
Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.
I loved you because there was no other place for me to go. We were married because we did not know what else to do with each other. You never knew me, nothing about me, what died inside me, what lived invisibly.
All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is.
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We forget that the world is what we imagine it to be. We stop being the sun and become, instead, the pool of water reflecting it.
A superior man in dealing with the world is not for anything or against anything. He follows righteousness as the standard.
Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, "Why are things the way they are?" Why should he bother, when the way they were was always perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no answer, and up till then he was so blessed he didn't even know the question existed.