A Quote by Isabel Allende
A book is not an end in itself; it is only a way to touch someone - a bridge extended across a space of loneliness and obscurity - and sometimes it is a way of winning other people to our causes.
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Golden bridge, silver bridge or diamond bridge; it doesn't matter! As long as the bridge takes you across the other side, it is a good bridge!
There are degrees of loneliness, ways in which the experience of loneliness deepens, becomes something like what we might call a way of life. This way of life is both what is most damaging to us as a culture, and, paradoxically, contributes to its richness. It may in the end be our lasting contribution to the life of our planet.
I came from the time of so-called New Criticism - the poem in itself, the writing in itself - but around that time I had come across a critic called Kenneth Burke, who wrote a book called A Rhetoric of Motives, and it seemed to talk about another way, and gradually I realized that other way was that the reader made a difference.
But I also think all of the great stories in literature deal with loneliness. Sometimes it's by way of heartbreak, sometimes it's by way of injustice, sometimes it's by way of fate. There's an infinite number of ways to examine it.
Sometimes you can feel like the only person in the world to have struggled in a certain way and there is a shame around that. The way we deconstruct it all is by talking about it, by listening and even within our circles of friends and checking up on each other, making sure that if someone is going through something, they have someone to talk to.
To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.
The way the universe evolves in consciousness of itself and causes itself to be. We are just this blessed consciousness, nothing more, nothing less. We are the light inside light that fuses into the atoms of our bodies; we are the fire that whirls across the stellar deeps and dances all things into being.
?Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.
...rise above selfishness. This includes spiritual selfishness, when one looks toward personal edification and strengthening and has no other interest than one's own salvation. To be blessed is not an end in itself; we must be a blessing to others. All people have a talent in one way or another to touch and inspire other people's lives. Let us not only look inward and proudly say 'all is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth' (2 Ne. 28:21), but let us be a light unto a chaotic world.
Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me. It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward.
There's this book," Jared said. "And in this book a guy said that he would rather touch someones hand if she was dead than another girl who was alive. It's creepy. I know that." He was staring off into space, as if at some private nightmare. "Nothing matters in comparison. Nobody is real but her. So it feels sometimes as if nothing else matters at all, including other people. She wouldn't like that. Other people SHOULD matter." *** So he loved Kami.
When someone has to go to the hospital because they don't have insurance - and by the way, I think the insurance companies should be out of the mix altogether - but when someone needs health care, and they don't have the ability to pay for it, in our communities, we end up paying for it one way or the other.
Winning is fun, but those moments that you can touch someone's life in a very positive way are better.
I wanted to talk about how grace in and of itself changes us. It changes the way we treat other people, the way we view our lives, the way we treat our purpose and our eternal identity.
I think that feeling of reward comes from being able to find sometimes an unexpected reflection or insight that seems to transcend the description itself, where you actually realize you're concluding something that is a point of view, that may come across and actually touch people's conscience or minds in a way that could change, at least if not things, change points of view.
We all get lost once in a while, sometimes by choice, sometimes due to forces beyond our control. When we learn what it is our soul needs to learn, the path presents itself. Sometimes we see the way out but wander further and deeper despite ourselves; the fear, the anger or the sadness preventing us returning. Sometimes we prefer to be lost and wandering, sometimes it's easier. Sometimes we find our own way out. But regardless, always, we are found.
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