You are born with a character; it is given, a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians upon your birth...Each person enters the world called.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that each individual is born with a unique character or essence that shapes their identity and purpose in life.
James Hillman's quote emphasizes the philosophical idea that every person possesses an inherent character or nature that is granted at birth. This notion connects to the belief that we are not merely products of our environments but are called to fulfill a specific role or purpose that reflects our true self. The metaphor of 'guardians' implies a mystical force that bestows this character, hinting at the importance of understanding and nurturing our individuality as a gift throughout our lives.
In practice
This quote could be used during a graduation speech to inspire students to understand their unique paths in life.
Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure.
Mediocrity is no answer to violence. In fact, it probably invites violence. At least the mediocre and the violent appear together as in the old Western movies - the ruffian outlaw band shooting up main street and the little white church with the little white schoolteacher wringing her hands. To cool violence you need rhythm, humor, tempering; you need dance and rhetoric. Not therapeutic understanding.
Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem
Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.
My war - and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought that and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism).
Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.
Here we go mother on the shipless ocean. Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.
How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of oneβs place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond oneself. . . . Does scientific explanation of the world diminish its spiritual beauty? I think not. Science and spirituality are complementary, not conflicting; additive, not detractive. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades. (158-159)
To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.
There must be another life, she thought, sinking back into her chair, exasperated. Not in dreams; but here and now, in this room, with living people. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice with her hair blown back; she was about to grasp something that just evaded her. There must be another life, here and now, she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves.
I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space.
I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is [as] admirable and sound as it is dangerous β from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.
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