"Realize, then, that impoverishment is also a teacher, unique in its capacity to renew, and that its yield, when it ends, is a passionate openness which in turn re-invests the world with meaning.” - Louse Gluck
I found this quote in Naya's blog, which I visit from time to time, because she is a writer I have great admiration for, and reading her entries shows just how much more of my writerly self I have to improve. Along with Dean and Andrew, these people write about daily life like poetry. I, on the other hand, don't even know if that last sentence even made sense.
Anyways, I found this quote extremely appropriate for my situation now, even though I have already graduated and have a stable job (the quote is from a graduation address). But it is exactly those things, I think, that made it resound with me so strongly; that despite having a job, I still find myself helpless against the travails of life (to which, most often, the solution is MONEY), struggling to keep up with the ups and downs and requirements of living, of loving and being a lover (albeit a faraway one), waiting for bad times to end, hoping that that end is soon and find myself saying that it was all worth it.
I also think it's true, that coming from the bottom gives you a better appreciation of the things you have and the things you receive, provided that it's not too late. Because it is not unheard of for us, flawed and ungrateful humans that we are, to take the truly good things we have, become used to them in time until they become relegated to the background. It happens, more often than it should, that we fail to see the meaning and value these things (and people) have; and it is often at a fleeting, final moment from which we can never go back--that because of our pride or selfishness or just plain old stupidity, we are again thrown back into the old cesspool we once were in--we truly realize just how much we took it, him or her for granted, how much time we spent chasing after things we thought we needed but really didn't, how much we had.
And how much we lost.
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