Authors,
like everyone else, need words of inspiration, especially since they may
normally be the ones to provide such words to others.
Where
shall those motivational words come from?
·
Experience.
·
Loved
ones.
·
Friends.
·
Therapist.
·
Teachers.
·
Fellow
writer.
Or
maybe a book of quotations. Try You Had Better Make Some Noise: Words to Change
the World (Phaidon), a wonderful collection of a few dozen quotes that get your
attention. Here are some that made me
think:
“Sorry
for the inconvenience. We are trying to
change the world.”
-Anonymous
“To
acquiesce in despair is the very way to make despairing forecasts come true.”
--Bertrand
Russell
“Democracy
needs daily maintenance.”
--Shirin
Ebadi
“Never
measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.”
--Dag
Hammrskjold
“Either
we all live in a decent world, or nobody does.”
--George Orwell
“Those
who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable.”
--John
F. Kennedy
“Err
in the direction of kindness.”
--George
Saunders
“Critical
thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope
without critical thinking is naivette.”
--Maria
Popova
“An
unjust law is no law at all.”
--St.
Augustine
“The
words we use are the worlds we live in.”
--Richard
Ford
“We
must not confuse dissent with disloyalty..”
--Edward R. Murrow
Writers
need a constant feeding of inspiration and hope. They expose themselves to their deepest
emotions, to critically examine their life’s actions, to explore what’s
possible after examining a bloody history, to peer through the darkest
shortcomings of the human condition, and to return with not only a good
attitude but a visionary soul that can lead others through their words, imaginations,
and deepest desires.
Writers are a passionate temperamental, often fragile group – filled with questions, ideas, curiosities, solutions, moral standards, and a touch of unacted-upon lust, violence, anger, fear, conviction, and a thirst for revenge. The writer, in the end, seeks to use his or her mind and pen to cure the ills of the world and to empower others to reimagine the world in some better form. Such people need all of the support and inspiration society and its arts can provide.
Writers are a passionate temperamental, often fragile group – filled with questions, ideas, curiosities, solutions, moral standards, and a touch of unacted-upon lust, violence, anger, fear, conviction, and a thirst for revenge. The writer, in the end, seeks to use his or her mind and pen to cure the ills of the world and to empower others to reimagine the world in some better form. Such people need all of the support and inspiration society and its arts can provide.
Some
writers are comforted by the words of great writers, celebrities, or history’s
well-accomplished. Some just like wise
advice no matter who said it.
Quotes
save us time of having to really read a lot of books and give deep thought to
history, psychology, sociology, politics, religion, wealth, family, health, and
all of the significant institutions of study.
Quotes, in a matter of a few words or sentences, manage to perfectly
capture the scholarship of many.
Quotes
sound like pure truth to us. Even though
many quotes can be misinterpreted or simply can mean multiple things depending
on the reader, quotes usually come across as a proven, complete and
fulfilling ideal – as if we should start the world over and build on a world
filled by all of these quotes.
We
discount the reasons why we can’t seem to live the way the quote demands we
do. We forget or don’t understand or
remain unaware of the facts and people and events that have and may very well
preclude us from fulfilling the quote’s call to action. After all, there’s a reason why humanity is
screwed up – change can’t happen overnight that undoes and corrects a lifetime
or a millennia of shortfalls.
Still,
we need words to encourage us to try harder, work longer, draw strength, seek
fulfillment, dream a little more creatively, take risks, love more, and to
resist our negative urges. We need a
sermon – in the form of quotes – to elevate our game and scrub clean our faulty
pasts.
Quotes
give us a fresh start, as if it’s Day One of a new outlook on life. These quotes can save us, at least
momentarily, allowing us pause to arm ourselves with something good, positive,
and supportive. We get to reset our GPS and direct ourselves to a new
destination, even if we don’t know exactly where it will lead us.
We’re
never too young – or too old – to read a quote and then alter our thinking and
subsequently our actions. Sometimes we
need many quotes to get us going, and there’s no harm in revisiting the very
same quotes as either a reminder of support or as a way to rethink how we’ve
been approaching life.
The
irony about quotes is they seem to speak an undeniable truth to us, and yet in
many cases the quote represents an unattainable ideal, and as the reader
realizes this he or she may decide to stop trying, to no longer believe in the
driving force that’s needed to achieve. Instead of looking to see the world in
a new way and guiding it towards the ideal, the reader sees the world as it is,
harshly judges it and allows himself to go even lower and using the excuse for
his shortcomings that the world is not – and never will be – the ideal that’s
fantasized about in the quote. Suddenly
the wish to believe in more becomes the condemnation of all that keeps us from
the ideal.
We
become driven not by hope to change, but hatred of what keeps us down. We just fall into depression or anger, neither
of which will serve us to make meaningful, positive change.
But
we have no choice.
The
world needs improvement. It always has
and always will. We must seek to fulfill
a hard task – to live life as it is and enjoy it to the extent we don’t deny others
a similar chance. – but to also acknowledge its shortcomings and to find a way
to create and be a part of a solution.
We must not give up hope nor blindly wish for a better world without
real tools to enact it.
Maybe
the best quotes are the ones that spotlight a problem, propose a solution, and
lend hope and support to those who try to live, enjoy, change and support the
world that we all inhabit.
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