When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the absurdity of how we isolate ourselves through material possessions and personal barriers.
Morrie Schwartz's quote reflects on the tendency of individuals to create boundaries and possess material goods as a means of establishing identity and security. It suggests that this behavior is not only absurd but also counterproductive to human connection, as true fulfillment often comes from shared experiences and relationships rather than hoarding possessions.
In practice
In a speech about minimalism, this quote can illustrate how possessions can hinder true happiness.
People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.
The best way to deal with that is to live in a fully conscious, compassionate, loving way. Don't wait until you're on your deathbed to recognize that this is the only way to live.
Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.
Do the kind of things that come from the heart, When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overhelmed with what comes back
It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.
Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.
One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on those who stray as "those evil people" or "those poor people who need our help." Nor must we search for signs of "loveworthiness." Grace teaches us that God loves because of who God is, not because of who we are.
How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?
What is it that you contain? The Dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia. The expanding universe opening in your gut. Are your twenty-three feet of intestines loaded with stars?
It seems to me that a man who can think straight along for forty-seven years without changing a single idea ought to be kept in a cabinet as a curiosity.
Freedom is the power to create out of nothing, the power of the spirit to create out of itself.
Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventure, and for hides and furs is a phenomena which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging is such acts of brutality.
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