Tag Archives: memoirs

5. Survive love and loss (part 1)

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross said, “The most beautiful people are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life … Continue reading

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Using Twenty Questions as a Starting Point

Maybe a better way of organizing a life is using something like Franklin’s admirable virtues and contrasting one’s life events against it. In that vein, Sarah Blakewell’s How to Live, or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty … Continue reading

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On Discussing Beginnings

Discussing beginnings always degenerates into some kind of talk about the universe, spirituality, theology or at the very least physical philosophy – because when speaking in the present, it is usually assumed there is a past. A place where, at … Continue reading

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Each thing that starts must have an end

Each thing that starts must have an end; for every wax there is a wend that once begun, moves to its finish. Every birth has “bury” in it. My earliest memory is of walking down the street beside my mother, … Continue reading

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The wise men all say look within

The wise men all say look within; and still, we focus outward. Is it because we’re deaf, or stupid? Maybe we’re just cowards. In so many ways, our memories are like poetry: distillations of images that if given too much … Continue reading

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Memory is the Greatest Weapon

Memory is the greatest weapon in love’s mad arsenal. I wrote that line when I was 26 years old. It still rings true – although as I get older it seems often it is a weapon for good, a defensive … Continue reading

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On Reading Benjamin Franklin

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, I find that on the whole my life has been “felicitous” enough to suggest that I would, if given the opportunity, live it again exactly as it has been to again reach its current point – … Continue reading

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