The moment of change is the only poem.
Interpretation
Change is a powerful and transformative experience that can inspire creativity and reflection.
Adrienne Rich's quote suggests that significant moments of transformation in our lives are akin to poetry, emphasizing their beauty, depth, and meaning. It highlights the idea that change can be a profound source of inspiration and expression, allowing us to explore our emotions and experiences in unique and artistic ways.
In practice
During a graduation speech to encourage students to embrace their future.
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'β
There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
Commit yourself to do whatever it is you can contribute in order to create a healthy and sustainable future - the world needs you desperately. Find that in yourself and make a commitment - that is what will change the world.
What was it Catelyn Stark had called them, that night at Bitterbridge? The knights of summer. And now it was autumn and they were falling like leaves.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world.
I have to say goodbye to things in order to take on bigger things that I've always wanted to do.
Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.
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