The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we're gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure.
Interpretation
We cannot control how we will be remembered, but we can live authentically and fully.
This quote emphasizes the idea that our legacy is shaped by a complex mix of experiences and traits, and it is ultimately out of our control how we are remembered after we pass away. Instead of worrying about our reputation, we should focus on living authentically and fulfilling our potential, trusting that the most genuine aspects of ourselves will leave a lasting impact on others.
In practice
This quote would be suitable for a commencement speech as a reminder to graduates about the importance of authenticity.
My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child's need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable in a way that even the most abundantly offered love, my parents', my brother's, even Tom's, had failed to do. Love was required of me now--to be given, not merely to be sought and returned.
We turned onto the last landing. Going out with this guy, I thought, would involve a lot of silly laughter, some wit--the buzz of his whispered wisecracks in my ear. But there would be as well his willingness to reveal, or more his inability to conceal, that he had been silently rehearsing my name as he climbed the stairs behind me. There would be his willingness to bestow upon me the power to reassure him. He would trust me with his happiness.
Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.
Hey, look at this!" He holds up a glistening, perfect pearl about the size of a pea. "You know, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls," he says earnestly to Finnick. "No, it doesn't," says Finnick dismissively. But I crack up, remembering that's how a clueless Effie Trinket presented us to the people of the Capitol last year, before anyone knew us. As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain.
Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell_x000D_ And I feel like I'm comin' home.
Most people spend their entire lives on a fantasy island called 'Someday I'll.'
You're either going to walk through life and experience it fully or you're going to be a voyeur. And I'm not a voyeur.
in the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears.
It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.
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