Relearning big things about life and love:
1. Life takes time.
Life is this tiny thing that happens in the grand scheme of things, but it's also this big thing that happens to each of us. It seems that it lasts and lasts because it's all we have, it's what frames our experience of reality.
Love, family, knowledge: they all are properly measured in decades and not in days. As the most important experiences in life, they take time.
2. Life is short.
And although life is the greatest of events, you can hold it in one hand. Life can fit into a seven hundred page book and remain irreducible, just like the fifty-three years of Jude St. Francis' life.
3. Who seeks everything, is left with nothing.
Life has a beginning and an end. This means we can only do a certain amount of things in it. Which of those things will be meaningful enough to be written in the seven hundred pages of our lives?
In a passage of the book, Willem remembers a scene from a play titled If This Were a Movie. His character explains that when we choose a partner, we get to pick three qualities. "Four, if we're very lucky. That's real life. (...) If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing."
As we get older, we get to learn and accept the qualities we want to live with. We learn to be realistic, figure out what's most important to us and look out for it. Life becomes a proper journey when those limits are defined. It's the equivalent of an architect who chooses the materials, the structural elements and the patterns of light for a building's design. The building's identity will make sense because of these limits. They'll shape matter into a building, one that's distinct and unique.
4. Compassion is key for love.
In the midst of life, love seems to be the source of the most rewarding things. To be so, love must transcend the basic social contract (you give me, I give you). Love must be to remain in a state of compassion, in a state where no rules regulate the giving and receiving. This dynamic is rediscovered daily, becoming more and more selfless. Compassion is feeling infinitely giver and receiver, with doors always open, warm chested and ready to take in.
1. Life takes time.
Life is this tiny thing that happens in the grand scheme of things, but it's also this big thing that happens to each of us. It seems that it lasts and lasts because it's all we have, it's what frames our experience of reality.
Love, family, knowledge: they all are properly measured in decades and not in days. As the most important experiences in life, they take time.
2. Life is short.
And although life is the greatest of events, you can hold it in one hand. Life can fit into a seven hundred page book and remain irreducible, just like the fifty-three years of Jude St. Francis' life.
3. Who seeks everything, is left with nothing.
Life has a beginning and an end. This means we can only do a certain amount of things in it. Which of those things will be meaningful enough to be written in the seven hundred pages of our lives?
In a passage of the book, Willem remembers a scene from a play titled If This Were a Movie. His character explains that when we choose a partner, we get to pick three qualities. "Four, if we're very lucky. That's real life. (...) If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing."
As we get older, we get to learn and accept the qualities we want to live with. We learn to be realistic, figure out what's most important to us and look out for it. Life becomes a proper journey when those limits are defined. It's the equivalent of an architect who chooses the materials, the structural elements and the patterns of light for a building's design. The building's identity will make sense because of these limits. They'll shape matter into a building, one that's distinct and unique.
4. Compassion is key for love.
In the midst of life, love seems to be the source of the most rewarding things. To be so, love must transcend the basic social contract (you give me, I give you). Love must be to remain in a state of compassion, in a state where no rules regulate the giving and receiving. This dynamic is rediscovered daily, becoming more and more selfless. Compassion is feeling infinitely giver and receiver, with doors always open, warm chested and ready to take in.
Stefy likes this.