My Life in Quotes- #2
"The only immovable point is the unlimited freedom to change, to preserve freedom without content."- Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be
Following graduation from John Dewey HS, I went on to Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. I knew that I wanted to be a rabbi and there were precious few places to major in Jewish Studies, or, more precisely, Near Eastern and Judaic Studies.
While still in high school, I attended the Teacher’s Institute (TI) at the Jewish Theological Seminary. To my surprise, the credits from TI transferred to Brandeis, and my major was virtually complete before I even began.
So, I flipped through the course catalogue and discovered Philosophy, in which I ultimately double-majored. Paul Tillich’s fierce emphasis on the human search for meaning and what he describes as the “unlimited freedom to change” must have been very appealing to a 17 year old college freshman. “The Courage to Be” is what life is all about at that age, the process of discovering what and how and why one wants to be.
Reflecting back on this quote, I have a deeper appreciation for the idea of limits to the freedom to change, both those imposed internally and those imposed by the culture. A little bit of structure is not a bad thing.
I’ve come to a bit more appreciative of limits and boundaries.
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.
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