Drink your wine. Laugh from your gut. Burden your moments with thankfulness. Be as empty as you can be when that clock winds down. Spend your life. And if time is a river, may you leave a wake.
Interpretation
Embrace life fully, expressing joy and gratitude, while being mindful of the passage of time.
This quote encourages us to live our lives to the fullest, celebrating each moment with joy and thankfulness. It suggests that as time passes, we should aim to leave a positive impact, akin to a wake left in a river, reflecting the meaningful experiences we create along the way.
In practice
During a toast at a celebration, to remind everyone to appreciate the moment.
Imagine a poem written with such enormous three-dimensional words that we had to invent a smaller word to reference each of the big ones; that we had to rewrite the whole thing in shorthand, smashing it into two dimensions, just to talk about it. Or don’t imagine it. Look outside. Human language is our attempt at navigating God’s language; it is us running between the lines of His epic, climbing on the vowels and building houses out of the consonants.
The world is rated R, and no one is checking IDs. Do not try to make it G by imagining the shadows away. Do not try to hide your children from the world forever, but do not pretend there is no danger . Train them. Give them sharp eyes and bellies full of laughter. Make them dangerous. Make them yeast, and when they’ve grown, they will pollute the shadows.
You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark - I'm on fire almost - I'm burning away into nothing - but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am.
The world is not a wish-granting factory.
I realized that very young - that a life where you don't live to your full potential, or you don't experiment, or you're afraid, or you hesitate, or there are things you know you should do but you just don't get around to them, is a life that I'd be miserable living, and the only way to feel that I'm on the right path is just to be true to myself, whatever that may be, and that tends to come with stepping out of something that's maybe safe or traditional.
Who promised you that only for joy were you brought to this earth?
Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
Life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared.
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