He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.
Interpretation
Life's truths can be burdensome for the young, and ignorance can encourage them to pursue their dreams.
In this quote, McCarthy suggests that the harsh realities of life are often concealed from the young to allow them to embrace their pursuits with passion and enthusiasm. If they were fully aware of these truths, they might be discouraged from taking the risks necessary for growth and fulfillment, thus losing their drive and spirit in the early stages of life.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a graduation speech to inspire young graduates about embracing the unknown.
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
That's the way to come to the Word of God. Read it as though it were His love letter to you.
It helps to write down half a dozen things which are worrying me. Two of them, say, disappear; about two of them nothing can be done, so it's no use worrying; and two perhaps can be settled.
Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you.
An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
It taught him how to listen -- how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting soul, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.
My problem is how to find the best way of being useful.
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