"A tourist may go through a museum with a Baedeker, looking conscientiously at everything important, and come out less alive than when he went in. He has looked at everything and seen nothing. He has done a great deal and it has only made him tired. If he had stopped for a moment to look at one picture he really liked and forgotten about all the others, he might console himself with the thought that he had not completely wasted his time...
Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what everybody else seems to want to become. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all...
Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted?"
--Thomas Merton
from No Man Is an Island
6 comments:
*nods* that is a great quote.
ryc: thank you for your kind words :) Its nice to hear.
He cuts right to the heart of things.
Perfect. Thanks for posting this.
love, Beth
Wonderful quote.
The first paragraph resonates with what I learned in the Met Museum of Art this year.
What a mouthful of wisdom. Thanks for sharing.
Hmmm...Merton seems to have tapped into something, eh? Eight comments and an email are rather a lot of response to a simple quote.
May have to further explore this. I know it certainly resonates with ME!
Megan-Thanks for the note about it matching up with what you learned at the museum. Confirmation from a non-related source is always great.
Rae--I think you've hit a truth, there, for sure. Maybe we're afraid to find out what we really admire for fear of it not "matching", so we distract ourselves with noise, things and busyness.
I hate fear. And I've had just about enough of it.
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