I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.
Interpretation
This quote highlights how the ability to see multiple perspectives can hinder our ability to focus on the present and move towards the future.
Doris Lessing's quote reflects on the paradox of having a plethora of viewpoints and options. While it can be beneficial to consider different perspectives, the constant analysis of possibilities may lead to indecision and prevent one from fully engaging with the present moment. This suggests that the ability to think critically can sometimes create barriers to personal progress and fulfillment.
In practice
In a discussion about decision-making, you could quote this to illustrate how overthinking can hinder progress.
In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.
Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds.
There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and be conscious of them.
The World War I, I'm a child of World War I. And I really know about the children of war. Because both my parents were both badly damaged by the war. My father, physically, and both mentally and emotionally. So, I know exactly what it's like to be brought up in an atmosphere of a continual harping on the war.
You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.
When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is the chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.
. . . Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy--of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.
As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this.
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
Not only can no one predict the future, we don't understand the present - and there isn't even any certainty about the past.
Compassion is the basis of morality.
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