A Quote by Michael Ignatieff
Family traditions are more than arguments with the dead, more than collections of family letters you try to decipher. A tradition is also a channel of memory through which fierce and unrequited longings surge, longings that define and shape a whole life.
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Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you.
I'd rather do something than read about it." "That's fine, but if you do it, and then can't think what it means, it's never much of a memory. Life has more to so with memories of the past and longings for the future than it ever does with *right now*." -pg 138-9
Like anyone else, a lot of what I do and how I think has been shaped by my family and my overall life experience. Many who know me say I am also defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning. I buy more books than I can finish. I sign up for more online courses than I can complete. I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things. So family, curiosity and hunger for knowledge all define me.
Even a good marriage leaves people with longings for certain things their marriage will never be. So, do they accept that, make compromises, and say, "You can't have everything in life," which is what we always did? Or do they say, "I deserve more. I want to experience that thing and, you know, I have fifty more years to live than I used to." It's not necessarily that we have more desires today, but we do feel more entitled to pursue them. We live in this "right to happiness" culture, and yes, we do live half a century longer than we used to.
The sight of a child…will arouse certain longings in adult, civilized persons — longings which relate to the unfulfilled desires and needs of those parts of the personality which have been blotted out of the total picture in favor of the adapted persona.
The only duration of family life that satisfies the loftiest longings of the human soul is forever.
Do not cut lose from your longings - for what are we without our longings?
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.
The life of woman is full of woe,
Toiling on and on and on,
With breaking heart, and tearful eyes,
The secret longings that arise,
Which this world never satisfies!
Some more, some less, but of the whole
Not one quite happy, no, not one!
One of the things that we're missing from our political dialogue right now is the idea that the United States is a home. It is more than an accounting sheet. It is more than the sum of its G.D.P., its total tax collections, or its total outlays. America is a family.
Totalitarianism extends to whatever touches it...psychological technique, as it operates in the army or in a great industrial plant, entails a direct action on the family. It involves a psychological adaptation of family life to military or industrial methods, supervision of family life, and training family life for military or industrial service. Technique can leave nothing untouched in a civilization. Everything is its concern. Technique, which is destroying all other civilizations, is more than a simple mechanism: it's a whole civilization in itself.
Reagan's emotional intelligence, his ability to suss out people's longings and to channel them for political purposes, was better than just about any human being that ever lived.
Since 2005, I have not spent much time with my family. In fact I have spent more time at the Taj Landsend in Mumbai. It was my 100th visit recently, which means I have spent more than 400 days in that hotel, and that is a lot more than I have spent with my family.
I love women because of their spirit, courage, and the things they go through in the process of family and life and then all the complexities and now the careers of the family and life and the whole thing. But I feel badly for our men in all of our traditions.
How many precious things do we not already possess which others have not - have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy these, then, and bless God that we are permitted to enjoy them, rather than importune His goodness with vain longings for more.
Family was even a bigger word than I imagined, wide and without limitations, if you allowed it, defying easy definition. You had family that was supposed to be family and wasn't, family that wasn't family but was, halves becoming whole, wholes splitting into two; it was possible to lack whole, honest love and connection from family in lead roles, yet to be filled to abundance by the unexpected supporting players.
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