Maturity, A Human Strategy, Matt Berry, aphorism 214

214
Maturity is best understood not as a tapering down to nothing upon the approach of old age, but with the entire conception of Past and Future stood on end, like an hour glass, where after we have allowed each day to go by, one by one, through this narrow actuality, we learn to demand less and less of the upper chamber, our future, as time passes so that we may accept more and more of the actuality toward the end.  This is an improvement over our former happiness, when we looked into the upper chamber, our dreams wide and full, demanding more, always more, and caring not for experiences to the contrary as they passed into the lower chamber of our memories.




A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism



Popular posts from this blog

A valuable book, A Human Strategy, aphorism 387

387 A valuable book may be torn to pieces without diminishing the human spirit, just so long as the words have already been read and understood.  To feel the loss of the book — at its material destruction, even though one had already digested its contents fully and had aligned oneself toward its overall direction — is evidence that one values the non-human being over human becoming , the static thing over the dynamic process .  In response to the fear of our unknowable future we would rather freeze ourselves into a single stage of growth at the expense of the entire metamorphosis. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism
Read more
The Ascetic Impulse: We think we deliberately hurt ourselves when it is simply that we do know which version of ourselves will satisfy our needs more fully. We try on a personality as if trying on new clothes. Bizarrely, the self we beat up has heretofore been a complete stranger.
Read more