A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it. The fundamental magic of flying is a miracle that has nothing to do with any of its practical purposes - purposes of speed, accessibility and convenience - and will not change as they change. Woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life. One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. Purposeful giving is not as apt to deplete one's resources; it belongs to that natural order of giving that seems to renew itself even in the act of depletion. The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness. Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego. Lost time is like a run in a stocking. It always gets worse. Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. One must lose one's life in order to find it. Duration is not a test of true or false. People "died" all the time. ... Parts of them died when they made the wrong kinds of decisions-decisions against life. Sometimes they died bit by bit until finally they were just living corpses walking around. If you were perceptive you could see it in their eyes; the fire had gone out ... you always knew when you made a decision against life. ... The door clicked and you were safe inside- safe and dead. The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. It isn't for the moment you are stuck that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security. It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded. It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded. Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. One can get just as much exultation in losing oneself in a little thing as in a big thing. It is nice to think how one can be recklessly lost in a daisy. It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded. |