Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction.
Rebecca SolnitRead
Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Worrying is a false sense of control over uncertain situations, as people often prefer negative scenarios to uncertainty.
This quote by Rebecca Solnit reflects on the nature of worry, suggesting that it serves as a misguided attempt to assert control over aspects of life that are inherently unpredictable. Instead of confronting the discomfort of not knowing, many people find themselves trapped in a cycle of negative thinking, opting for imagined fears rather than embracing the openness of uncertainty. This perspective invites a deeper exploration of how individuals cope with anxiety and the ways in which they construct narratives to make sense of their fears.
Themes
WorryControlUncertaintyFearKnowledge
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming anxiety, one might say, 'As Rebecca Solnit suggests, we often prefer the ugly scenarios we create to the possibility of the unknown.'
More from Rebecca Solnit
All quotes →I still think the revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small.
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We have a real role in how our own collective lives, our nation, and our world and society turn out. Seizing those opportunities is important, and disasters are sometimes one of those opportunities.
Rebecca SolnitRead
If sorrow and beauty are all tied up together, then perhaps maturity brings with it not what Nabhan calls abstraction, but an aesthetic sense that partially redeems the losses time brings and finds beauty in the faraway.
Rebecca SolnitRead
The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.
Rebecca SolnitRead
Cities have always offered anonymity, variety, and conjunction, qualities best basked in by walking: one does not have to go into the bakery or the fortune-teller's, only to know that one might. A city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination.
Rebecca SolnitRead
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I'm actively working hard on learning to appreciate yourself no matter what. If what someone else says can easily derail you, it means your sense of self isn't that firmly established in the first place. It's an inside job. You're beautiful and worthy and totally unique. People insult each other based on their own insecurities - even though it may feel personal, it really never is. Really. Seriously.
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The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.
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You know, when I sit in meetings and things are very tense and people take things extremely seriously and they invest a lot of their ego, I sometimes think to myself, 'Come on, you know, there's life and there's death and there is love.' And all of that ego business is nonsense compared to that.
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