I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?
Interpretation
The quote reflects on unfulfilled hopes and aspirations for the future, particularly in relation to personal milestones and societal events.
In this quote, Christopher Hitchens expresses a deep sense of concern and frustration over the possibility of not being able to witness significant life events and changes. It highlights the human desire for longevity and the hope to see one’s plans and dreams come to fruition, whether personal (like watching children get married) or cultural (like witnessing the rebuilding of landmarks after tragedy). Through this reflection, Hitchens underscores the importance of life itself and the bitter realization that time may cut short the ability to experience these milestones.
In practice
In a eulogy, one might use this quote to reflect on the dreams the deceased had for the future.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way — because it’s had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you’ve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark - spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.
Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.
I think that we all stand on the dartboard of life. Roughly 30,000 people a year are going to catch a dart labeled pancreatic cancer, and that's unfortunate. It's not what I would have chosen. But I in no way feel like I deserved it.
You felt it as a depth of ease in certain boys, their innate, affable assurance that they would not have to struggle for a place in the world; that is already reserved for them.
How terrible would it have been if I had come out with some watered-down version of who I am? People fell in love with the real me, and I still feel blessed that that was how the journey began.
Some of it's magic and some of it's tragic but I had a good life all the way.
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