You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the challenge of understanding the experiences of refugees for those who have a stable home to return to.
Naomi Shihab Nye's quote prompts reflection on the stark difference in perspectives between those who enjoy the security of a stable home and those who are forced from theirs. It encourages empathy towards refugees, urging us to recognize the profound instability and fear that defines their reality, which is often beyond the comprehension of those who have never faced such circumstances.
In practice
This quote can be shared at a community event to foster understanding and support for refugees.
It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.
I am looking for the human who admits his flaws Who shocks the adversary By being kinder not stronger What would that be like? We don't even know
I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.
A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn't catch up to him, the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell.
I think whenever you love something or somebody it means that you have to extend yourself, you have to grow - get a little larger. You can't stay in your little comfortable - spot.
As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.
We have found that it is easier for men to die together on the field of battle than it is for them to live together at home in peace.
You can't have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits, it keeps becoming something else.
The amount of love, kindness, patience I have for others is is directly proportional to how much love I have for myself, because we cannot give others what we ourselves do not have. And, unsurprisingly, the amount of love, respect, support, and compassion I receive from others is also in direct proportion to how much I love myself.
All young women begin by believing they can change and reform the men they marry. They can't.
The opposite of love is not hate. It is fear.
My weaknesses have always been food and men - in that order.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.