When I was young, a teacher had forbidden me to say "more perfect" because she said if a thing is perfect it can't be more so. But by now I had seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the understanding that perfection can be subjective and can exist on a spectrum, allowing for growth and confidence in life's experiences.
Norman Maclean's quote highlights the evolution of thought that occurs when one experiences life. Initially, the narrator learned from a teacher that perfection is absolute and cannot be exceeded, but with age and experience, they have come to understand that life often defies such absolutes. This realization allows for a more nuanced view of perfection, suggesting that it can be embraced while still striving for deeper appreciation and understanding.
In practice
In a graduation speech, one might reference this quote to encourage students to embrace the imperfect nature of life.
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.
Ahead and to the west was our ranger station - and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world.
Poets talk about "spots of time", but it is really the fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone.
As I get considerably beyond the biblical allotment of three score years and ten, I feel with increasing intensity that I can express my gratitude for still being around on the oxygen-side of the earth's crust only by not standing pat on what I have hitherto known and loved. While oxygen lasts, there are still new things to love, especially if compassion is a form of love.
At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us. You can love completely without complete understanding.
One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.
A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.
Appreciation has become my destiny in life. Perhaps it's the instinct of a polar bear enjoying hibernation in the vast snows.
Your trials did not come to punish you, but to awaken you - to make you realise that you are a part of Spirit and that just behind the sparks of your life is the Flame of Infinity.
They are eloquent who can speak low things acutely, and of great things with dignity, and of moderate things with temper.
Older people sit down and ask, 'What is it?' but the boy asks, 'What can I do with it?'.
Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.
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