Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Interpretation
Life is about uncertainty and the unknown, and true creativity lies in embracing that mystery.
Agnes De Mille emphasizes that living fully involves embracing uncertainty and the unknown. When one becomes overly certain and confident in their understanding, they cease to truly live and create, losing the spontaneity that defines the artistic spirit. The artist's journey is one of continuous exploration and vulnerability, suggesting that taking risks and accepting the potential for failure is essential to both life and artistry.
In practice
In a motivational speech about taking risks in career choices.
Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
We can't stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
Most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting moments in our lives; the rest is filler.
We never remember days, only moments.
They say time is money, but that's not true. Time is life. And if I want the fullest life, I need to find fullest time... the busyness of your life leaving little room for the source of your life... God gives us time. And who has time for God? Which makes no sense.
Nobody's life is a bed of roses. We all have crosses to bear, and we all just do our best. I would never claim to have the worst situation. There are many widows, and many people dying of AIDS, many people killed in Lebanon, people starving all over the planet. So we have to count our lucky stars.
I have sat with countless patients and families to discuss grim prognoses: It's one of the most important jobs physicians have. It's easier when the patient is 94, in the last stages of dementia, and has a severe brain bleed. For young people like me - I am 36 - given a diagnosis of cancer, there aren't many words.
As I get older... I start to realize that life ain't half bad. Each year, I'm amazed that I'm still alive. I don't take any of this for granted, I'm a lucky dude.
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