Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.
Interpretation
Our lives and experiences are interconnected, blending into a shared narrative.
In this quote, Salman Rushdie reflects on the profound interconnectedness of human lives. He suggests that our individual stories and experiences merge with those of others, creating a collective narrative that transcends our personal identities, highlighting the importance of community and shared experiences in shaping our lives.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of community, one could use this quote to emphasize how our lives are intertwined.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
There is a huge sense of loneliness as people leave villages and move to cities. It's hard to find that human connection as you move away from where you started.
Employers should not be able to impose their religious beliefs on female employees, ignoring their individual health decisions and denying their right to reproductive care. Bosses belong in the boardroom, not in the bedroom.
When I was little, my friends would gush over wedding gowns and honeymoons. But I saw too many people flush decades together down the toilet over money or kids or meaningless flings. My own parents chose to stay married, which I think is rather funny, since they show about as much affection for each other as pit bulls in a ring. Tying the knot means slipping a noose around love and choking it to death.
While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust.
Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.
My great hope for us as young women is to start being kinder to ourselves so that we can be kinder to each other. To stop shaming ourselves and other people for things we don't know the full story on - whether someone is too fat, too skinny, too short, too tall, too loud, too quiet, too anything. There's a sense that we're all βtooβ something, and we're all not enough.
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