I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.
Anna FreudRead
Who promised you that only for joy were you brought to this earth?
Interpretation
Life is not solely about experiencing joy; it includes suffering and challenges as well.
Anna Freud's quote emphasizes that life encompasses a wide spectrum of experiences beyond just joy. It prompts reflection on the expectations we have regarding happiness and the inevitability of hardships that shape our existence. The quote serves as a reminder that both joy and suffering are integral to the human experience, and that growth often stems from navigating life's challenges.
In practice
In a graduation speech to inspire students to embrace all facets of life.
Because I've been so blessed with a background in nursing and spent so much time with patients at a really intimate, vulnerable time in their lives, the one lesson I've learned is that you never turn down a challenge where you can keep your creative integrity and your heart and soul and your sense of self.
Sometimes we just walk into something that is not for us at all. We pretend it is. We think we can shrug it off like a coat, but it's not a coat at all, it's more like another skin. [...] All I wanted was to make my life thrilling for a while: to take the oridinary objects of my days and make a different argument out of them, no obligations to my past.
The secret of life', he said, 'is to become very very good at somethin' that's very very 'ard to do.
He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandonds himself to his demon or to his genius, following a mysterious law which bids him either to destroy or outdo himself.
The names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names.
I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it.
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