This time is difficult. Wait for me. We will live it out vividly. Give me your small hand: we will rise and suffer, we will feel, we will rejoice. We are once more the pair who lived in bristling places, in harsh nests in the rock. This time is difficult. Wait for me with a basket, with a shovel, with your shoes and your clothes. Now we need each other, not only for the carnations' sake, not only to look for honey — we need our hands to wash with, to make fire.
Interpretation
In challenging times, love and shared support can help us endure and thrive together.
Pablo Neruda's quote speaks to the resilience found in love during difficult times. It highlights the importance of companionship and mutual support in facing life's challenges, suggesting that together, we can navigate hardships with strength and joy. The imagery of shared tasks and the need for each other not only for minor comforts but for essential survival showcases that true partnership thrives even in adversity.
In practice
During a group discussion on relationships, this quote can illustrate the importance of mutual support during tough times.
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?
I want to see the thirst inside the syllables I want to touch the fire in the sound: I want to feel the darkness of the cry. I want words as rough as virgin rocks.” - Verb.
Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.
And here am I, budding among the ruins with only sorrow to bite on, as if weeping were a seed and I the earth's only furrow.
Once more I am the silent one who came out of the distance wrapped in cold rain and bells: I owe to earth's pure death the will to sprout.
I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.
That idea is strange to me. People keep on loving? People keep on loving even if you are not there in their face everyday to remind them? People keep on loving even if they no longer see you at all? People keep on loving even if they are loving someone else? Impossible: to believe you can be loved in absence when you don't even know how it feels to be loved when you are there.
There is no salvation for the soul but to fall in Love. Only lovers can escape out of these two worlds. This was ordained in creation. Only from the heart can you reach the sky: The Rose of Glory can grow only from the heart.
Love is what we are in our essence, and the more love we feel in our hearts, the more it will be brought to us.
I looked at this tiny, perfect creature and it was as though a light switch had been turned on. A great rush of love flooded out of me.
He who has fostered the sweet poison of love by fondling it, finds it too late to refuse the yoke which he has of his own accord assumed.
Love without risk is an impossibility, like war without death.
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