The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one's own place, One's own people, One's own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise- Into growth and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the idea that each person carries a sense of paradise within themselves, rooted in their childhood, but as they grow, they face changes that lead them away from that paradise.
Octavia Butler's quote emphasizes the concept that every individual possesses a child's innate understanding of paradise, which represents the ideal state of being, characterized by love, belonging, and familiarity. However, as people mature, they are inevitably exposed to change and new communities that can lead them away from this initial sense of paradise, highlighting the tension between holding onto the past and embracing growth and transformation in life.
In practice
During a speech about personal development, one could reference this quote to illustrate the balance between nostalgia and progress.
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world. Just start thinking peace, and the message will spread quicker than you think.
And we're in the middle of a 'perfect storm.' These days, government social services are being bad-mouthed and defunded. The non-profit world is looking more and more like the for-profit world. The growing gap between rich and poor makes most of us very anxious about where we stand.
If everyone is a changemaker, there's no way a problem can outrun a solution
You never know when it is going to happen, when you will experience a moment that dramatically transforms your life. When you look back, often years later, you may see how a brief conversation or an insight you read somewhere, changed the entire course of your life.
She scissored the curls away, and - toms, grow easily sentimental over their haircuts, but I remember this sensation very vividly - it was not like she was cutting hair, it was as if I had a pair of wings beneath my shoulder-blades, that the flesh had all grown over, and she was slicing free.
The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.
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