"Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness."- Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
If we are really blessed, home is a place of comfort and acceptance, of warmth and love. It’s the place where, to quote another quote, “. . . when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” (Robert Frost)
If we are really blessed, we are raised in such a home, with the kind of support Hesse describes, that is always available. Hesse powerfully describes the longing we have for that one place where we can set down our burdens and feel accepted and understood for exactly who we are.
And he powerfully describes the challenge of our journey through life. “So much dirt and humbug.” We feel his homesickness and maybe we can even relate to it.
"We go to bed because we cannot hear each other; we go to bed because we are too shy to look in each other's eyes, and in bed one can turn away one's head."- Rollo May, Love and Will
Rollo May published this book in 1969. The end of the ‘60’s, the era of free love. His words ring true. Sometimes it is much easier to get to know someone physically rather than emotionally, intellectually, spiritually.
His candid statement sounds ironic. And sad. Casual sex leaves many with a feeling of emptiness as we turn away, “are too shy to look in each other’s eyes,” and don’t listen to or see each other with open hearts.
"For he who loves risks more than all such things as that, (riches and lands, millions upon millions, thrones and principalities, fortune and well-being), and he who loves in as many ways as it is possible for a man to love risks most of all."- Soren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way
Entering into a deep loving relationship is a big risk. We open ourselves us to the greatest sense of harmony and connection, and also to the greatest wounding of our essential selves.
This is true of our partner relationships. But it’s also true of other relationships. I think of Elizabeth Stone’s epic quote, "Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
I’m thinking, as well, of our work. If we love our work, put our heart and soul into it, that is a huge risk. Having faced moments when my heartfelt, loving labor was not appreciated, I know all too well that great love involves the great risk of great pain.
"But I think it was a taste of what a revolution could mean. The transformation of everyday life."- Nora Sayre, Sixties Going On Seventies
I was born in 1956. That means that I spent the decade of the 60’s from the incredibly influential ages of 4 to 14. The 60’s were when I came into consciousness and formed my view of what life was about and what the world looked like.
It turns out that the 60’s were an aberration, that in no way did they represent anything close to real life. It took me decades to understand that they were, as Sayre puts it, a “taste of what a revolution could mean,” but not ongoing reality.
"They bring experience in search of interpretation."- ibid. (Nora Sayre, Sixties Going on Seventies
Clearly this quote spoke to me personally. I experienced the 60’s as the sum total of my conscious experience from ages 4 to 14. When the 70’s happened and the 80’s came along, I had no way to understand, to interpret, my experience.
"A man's integrity consists in being faithful to the script he's written for himself."- Barth, quoted in ibid. (Nora Sayre, Sixties Going on Seventies
Sayre is still analyzing the decade of the 60’s. My sense now is that she was clinging to the hope, as many were, that there could truly be a transformation of consciousness and the beginning of the age of Aquarius- “peace and love abounding.”
She is trying to encourage us, I think, to hold onto those ideals, even as they were slipping away.
Reading this as a very young person, I’m sure I appreciated that encouragement.
Now, it seems to me, we need to occasionally re-examine the script that we’ve written for ourselves, and make adjustments as we, hopefully, become older and wiser.
"He often feels a need of solitude, which for him is a vital necessity- sometimes like breathing, at other times like sleeping."- Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
When I arrived at Brandeis University in 1973, I enrolled in Prof. William A. Johnson’s philosophy course. We were challenged to read an entire book each week. When it came to Soren Kierkegaard, the assignment was to complete Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Philosophical Fragments.
First of all, what fabulous titles. Captivating. I sat down in the library and read each book, and then proceeded to read every other book of Kierkegaard’s that had been translated from the original Danish into English.
Ultimately I wrote my B.A. thesis on Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Abraham and Job.
This particular quote? I was and am a pretty social person. I think that Kierkegaard was likely an introvert and that this is his self-description.
Maybe I thought that I needed a little more alone time?
"Sin is not the wildness of flesh and blood, but it is the spirit's consent thereto."- ibid.- Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
Kierkegaard is a religious thinker and this quote no doubt reflects his Lutheran background. “Wildness of the flesh and blood” is a typically adolescent fascination. Guilt is the religious corrective.
But really- isn’t it all about a sense of balance? We are creatures flesh and blood and we read in the Jerusalem Talmud, that "In the future, a person will have to give an account for every permitted pleasure they denied themselves." (Kiddushin 4:12)
A little healthy wildness is not all bad.
19. "Are passions, then, the pagans of the soul? Reason alone baptized?"- Edward Young
See quote #18.
I imagine myself as a young (17 years old) college freshman. I was en route to rabbinical school with a strong interest in religion, so it seems natural that I would see passion through the lens of religious vocabulary.
Young’s quote would certainly offer a sense of comfort to a young student spending so much of their time in the library studying, in the world of reason, yet also enjoying the freedom to party hard!
"Pleasure disappoints, possibility never."- Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or Vol. I
This is a key quote in my life, even today, 50+ years after reading it for the first time. I find myself returning to its truth again and again. So much of our enjoyment comes from anticipation. Planning, looking forward, imagining future excitement and joy.
Most of the time, I think, I hope, that which we have waited for provides the satisfaction we had looked forward to.
Yet, sometimes there is a tiny sense of disappointment when the waiting is over, the event has transpired, and now what? We return to our less exciting everyday life.
Pleasure disappoints- sometimes.
Possibility is unlimited!
About this series-
I love words. I love when a word exactly captures the moment, the feeling. How it precisely describes something that you experienced but didn’t know exactly how to express. It’s like a warm bath or a deeply satisfying meal.
And beyond that- a collection of words. A deeply insightful phrase, thought-provoking and uplifting. A quote to remember.
I started collecting quotes when I was 16 years old. (1972) I’m 68 now, as I write these words, (2024), and there are 472 quotes in my collection. At this precise moment.
That’s not really that many over the course of 52 years. I guess I am fairly discriminating. Sometimes years can go by and the collection lays dormant. In other years there is a great harvest of quotes.
These are not necessarily famous quotes, things you’ll often hear referenced. For the most part, they simply represent words that I read that made me stop for a moment to meditate and bask in their impact. And quotes I enjoy reading and re-reading and quoting myself!
These quotes represent the evolution of my thinking over the course of 52 years. I look forward to pondering what it is that made me find each one meaningful enough to save.
Comments