In spite of all the talk and study about our next years, all the silent ponderings about what lies within them...it seems plain to us that many things are wrong in the present ones that can be, must be, changed. Our texture of belief has great holes in it. Our pattern lacks pieces.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need to address current issues instead of solely focusing on future possibilities.
M. F. K. Fisher reflects on the tendency of people to dream about the future while neglecting the pressing problems of the present. She suggests that despite all the discussions and contemplations about what lies ahead, there are significant flaws in our current circumstances that require immediate attention and change. This call to action highlights the urgency of confronting present challenges in order to have a better future.
In practice
During a conference on personal development, one might include this quote to advocate for addressing current barriers to growth.
I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in the Orangerie. I know now I was in the throes of some small glandular crisis, a sublimated bilious attack, a flick from the whip of melancholia, but then it was terrifying...nameless...
It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.
Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat - and drink! - with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.
There's a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.
...for me there is too little of life to spend most of it forcing myself into detachment from it.
It is easy to think of potatoes, and fortunately for men who have not much money it is easy to think of them with a certain safety. Potatoes are one of the last things to disappear, in times of war, which is probably why they should not be forgotten in times of peace.
The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.
Throughout the 20th century, we created wealth through vertically integrated corporations. Now, we create wealth through networks. We are at a turning point in human history, where the industrial age has finally run out of gas.
I think Dr. King would be pleased to see the number of elected officials of color - African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and progressive whites.
Who you think you are will always be frightened of change. But it doesn't make any difference to who you truly are.
You know, all is development. The principle is perpetually going on. First, there was nothing, then there was something; then-I forget the next-I think there were shells, then fishes; then we came-let me see-did we come next? Never mind that; we came at last. And at the next change there will be something very superior to us-something with wings. Ah! That's it: we were fishes, and I believe we shall be crows.
The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.