Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.
May SartonRead
Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.
Interpretation
The speaker values personal growth and inner beauty over superficial appearances.
In this quote, May Sarton reflects on the changes she has experienced over the past year, emphasizing that the totality of her being and character is far more significant than the physical signs of aging, such as wrinkles. It suggests that the depth of a personβs experiences and the wisdom gained are what truly define them, rather than their external appearance.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about self-acceptance and embracing our life experiences.
Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.
Pain can make a whole winter bright, like fever, force us to live deep and hard.
She became for me an island of light, fun, wisdom where I could run with my discoveries and torments and hopes at any time of day and find welcome.
Here life goes on, even and monotonous on the surface, full of lightning, of summits and of despair, in its depths. We have now arrived at a stage in life so rich in new perceptions that cannot be transmitted to those at another stage - one feels at the same time full of so much gentleness and so much despair - the enigma of this life grows, grows, drowns one and crushes one, then all of a sudden in a supreme moment of light one becomes aware of the sacred.
I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep.... Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.
I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seed every spring and never counts the loss, because it is not loss, it is adding to future life. It is the tree's way of being. Strongly rooted perhaps, but spilling out its treasure on the wind.
She felt that she would have to be much more than just a doctor or an engineer. She would have to be a saint.
Never be so faithful to your plan that you are unwilling to consider the unexpected. Never be so faithful to your plan that you are unwilling to entertain the improbable opportunity that comes looking for you.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.
I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities.
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