quotes
I have a file in which I copy out parts of books that particularly resonate with me. I started out just collecting phrases, more like ordinary quotations, but then I kept finding myself wanting to keep whole passages. Mostly they're places where I recognise something of myself; something I hadn't noticed or been able to describe, or something I thought nobody else would understand. It's as if they're pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and if I could just find enough of them and fit them together properly, I would understand all my problems and the solutions would become clear.
I keep wanting to share some of them, but I have trouble writing posts to go with them, because if I could express it myself, I wouldn't need to collect other people's words.
Anyway, here's the latest addition:
"I don't get to have those kinds of goals [success, jobs, love, getting famous]. I get to try to get out of bed in the morning, and half the time I don't. I try to have a conversation. If I get up, I think, okay, I'm not going to smoke so many cigarettes today, and I'm going to have a conversation, and it's going to last something like ten minutes. I try to open the door to my bedroom. Mostly I can do that, if I've gotten out of bed, and that's pretty great, a thing I can be successful at almost every time I try it."J. Robert Lennon, The Funnies
posted by Lucy @ 12:59 AM
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comments
2 Comments:
I can't tell you how much I love your idea. That you can pick up pieces that someone else articulated - see where you fit in - but collect the ones that relate well to you so you can create this amazing, unique picture. That struck me as impossibly cool somehow.
I know figuring myself out is an ongoing process - testing limits, setting goals, being hurt and finding a way out of that pain. I'm glad you're putting pieces together. That's important. I very much enjoy hearing about the process so far. :)
Hugs to you. And remember that if there are some days you need to stay in your room with the door closed, you're still reading and learning about yourself. So there's always the hope that tomorrow will be better.
Thanks; I'm glad you like it. I think the other aspect, that I didn't think of before, is that the passages I save aren't completely accurate descriptions of me. Usually there's some essence that is true, but I realised that other people reading them won't necessarily understand exactly why it meant anything to me. It seems like I should be able to triangulate some important insights from looking at what many of these pieces share, though.
The reason I thought of that is that this passage sounds so depressing, but really I have been much better since Tuesday. I wasn't actually hiding in my room to read this, I was just reading, for a change :)
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