Momma And The Meaning Of Life Quotes

I explain to my patients that abused children often find it hard to disentangle themselves from their dysfunctional families, whereas children grow away from good, loving parents with far less conflict. After all, isn't that the task of a good parent, to enable the child to leave home?

every single person in the world is fundamentally alone. It’s hard, but that’s the way it is, and we have to face it.

More than death, one fears the utter isolation that accompanies it. We try to go through life two by two, but each one of us must die alone- no one can die our death with us or for us. The shunning of the dying by the living prefigures final absolute abandonment

Upon learning that her cancer had spread to her spine, Paula prepared her thirteen year-old son for her death by writing him a letter of farewell that moved me to years. In her final paragraph she reminded him that the lungs in the human fetus do not breathe, nor do it's eyes see. Thus, the embryo is being prepared for an existence it cannot yet imagine

I hate it that she has so insinuated herself into the interstices of my mind that I can never root her out. And most of all, I hate that at the end of my life I feel compelled to ask, "How'd I do, Mama?".

Nu numai ca fictiunea isi are propriul adevar, dar orice povestire, oricat de „adevarata”, este o minciuna pentru ca omite atat de multe.

I only meant that a feeling is merely a feeling. A subjective state can never substantiate an objective truth.

Hard to think of others when you’re feeling trapped, feeling you’re spinning in a vicious circle.

But those things aren’t you. They are just things about you, not the real, the core you. Look at the center of you. What do you want to change there?

It was she who taught me that embracing death honestly permits one to experience life in a richer, more satisfying manner.

Oamenii se iubesc pe ei insisi daca vad o imagine iubitoare a lor reflectata in ochii cuiva de care le pasa cu adevarat.

Confruntarea cu moartea iminenta poate sa propulseze omul in intelepciune si la o noua profunzime a existentei.

Am invatat demult ca atunci cand intre doua persoane este un lucru grav si nu vorbesc despre el, nu vorbesc nici despre altceva important.

After all, isn’t that the task of a good parent, to enable the child to leave home?

We need art, Nietzsche said, lest we perish from the truth.

anxiety is a trail that leads to insight and wisdom?

when two opposing feelings put you in a dilemma, your best recourse is to express both feelings and the dilemma.

Can it be that I have escaped neither my past nor my mother?

Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not.’” “Is that any different from ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead’?” “A big difference. In death there is no ‘you.’ ‘You’ and ‘dead’ cannot coexist.

Am invatat in munca mea, ca se tem cel mai mult de moarte cei care se apropie de ea avand prea multa viata netraita in ei. Cel mai bine este sa ne folosim toata viata. Sa nu-i lasam mortii decat drojdiile, nimic altceva decat un castel ars pana in temelii.

Myrna. Listen hard to what I’m going to say. You’re collecting and hoarding. You’re accumulating information from me, but you’re not giving anything back! I believe you’re trying to relate to me differently now but I’m not experiencing it as engagement. I don’t feel yet that you’re relating to me as a person—it’s more like you regard me as a data bank from which you make withdrawals.

A’ight, so what do you think it means?” “You don’t know?” I ask. “I know. I wanna hear what YOU think.” Here he goes. Picking my brain. “Khalil said it’s about what society feeds us as youth and how it comes back and bites them later,” I say. “I think it’s about more than youth though. I think it’s about us, period.” “Us who?” he asks. “Black people, minorities, poor people. Everybody at the bottom in society.” “The oppressed,” says Daddy. “Yeah. We’re the ones who get the short end of the stick, but we’re the ones they fear the most. That’s why the government targeted the Black Panthers, right? Because they were scared of the Panthers?” “Uh-huh,” Daddy says. “The Panthers educated and empowered the people. That tactic of empowering the oppressed goes even further back than the Panthers though. Name one.” Is he serious? He always makes me think. This one takes me a second. “The slave rebellion of 1831,” I say. “Nat Turner empowered and educated other slaves, and it led to one of the biggest slave revolts in history.” “A’ight, a’ight. You on it.” He gives me dap. “So, what’s the hate they’re giving the ‘little infants’ in today’s society?” “Racism?” “You gotta get a li’l more detailed than that. Think ’bout Khalil and his whole situation. Before he died.” “He was a drug dealer.” It hurts to say that. “And possibly a gang member.” “Why was he a drug dealer? Why are so many people in our neighborhood drug dealers?” I remember what Khalil said—he got tired of choosing between lights and food. “They need money,” I say. “And they don’t have a lot of other ways to get it.” “Right. Lack of opportunities,” Daddy says. “Corporate America don’t bring jobs to our communities, and they damn sure ain’t quick to hire us. Then, shit, even if you do have a high school diploma, so many of the schools in our neighborhoods don’t prepare us well enough. That’s why when your momma talked about sending you and your brothers to Williamson, I agreed. Our schools don’t get the resources to equip you like Williamson does. It’s easier to find some crack than it is to find a good school around here. “Now, think ’bout this,” he says. “How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking ’bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don’t know anybody with a private jet. Do you?” “No.” “Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they’re destroying our community,” he says. “You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them to survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can’t get jobs unless they’re clean, and they can’t pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That’s the hate they’re giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That’s Thug Life.

Sometimes I felt like I'd just drift off into oblivion if it weren't for your hand anchoring me to my life.

Death is the extinguishing of consciousness.

The ancient philosopher who said “Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not” was Lucretius, expounding upon Epicurus.

Credinta, oricat de pasionata, de pura, de arzatoare, nu spune absolut nimic despre realitatea existentei lui Dumnezeu

Se c'è una via verso il Meglio, essa necessita di uno sguardo intenso al Peggio.

I learned long ago that when two people have something big between them and don’t talk about it, they don’t talk of anything else of importance either.

Siamo creature in ricerca perenne di significati, che devono venire a patti con il fatto di essere scagliate in un universo che, intrinsecamente, è privo di significato.

recognizing that she lives in a universe absolutely indifferent to whether she is happy or unhappy.

grandiose fantasies of rescuing distressed damsels.

Am învățat în munca mea [...] că se tem cel mai mult de moarte cei care se apropie de ea având prea multă viață netrăită în ei.

died.

process check”) and asked the members to reflect upon their own interaction.

A heavy silence descended.

And the feeling in the dream, Irene?” Almost always my first question. The feeling in a dream often leads to the center of its meaning.

confrontation tends to slow my thoughts,

But perhaps the main reason I was not ground down by Irene’s rage was that I always knew that it masked her profound sadness, despair, and fear.

the truth we discover for ourselves.

نیچه گفته است: ما نیازمند هنریم تا حقیقت هلاکمان نکند

many distressed people consider death a magical place of peace. But death is not a state of peace, nor is it a state in which one continues life without pain; it is consciousness extinguished.

have always been baffled by religious belief. As long as I can remember, I have regarded it as self-evident that religious systems develop in order to provide comfort and soothe the anxieties of our human condition.

In fact, we found strong evidence that many of the widows who had had the best marriages went through the bereavement and detachment process more easily than those who had had a deeply conflicted one. (The explanation for this paradox lay, it seemed to me, in “regret”: for those who had spent their lives married to the wrong person, bereavement was more complicated because they also had to grieve for themselves, for their many squandered years.)

Like Paula, the members were eager for students; they felt that they had much to teach, and that their death sentences had made them wise. They had learned one lesson particularly well: that life cannot be postponed; it must be lived now, not suspended until the weekend, until vacation, until the children leave for college, until the diminished years of retirement. More than once I heard the lament, “What a pity it is that I had to wait till now, till my body was riddled with cancer, to learn how to live.

More than death, one fears the utter isolation that accompanies it. We try to go through life two by two, but each of us must die alone—no one can die our death with us or for us. The shunning of the dying by the living prefigures final absolute abandonment.

من نیز با پیروی از فروید اغلب رؤیاپرداز را کوتوله ی فربه و سرحالی تصور می کنم که در دل جنگل دندریت ها و اکسون ها، زندگی خوبی برای خود دست و پا کرده است. روزها می خوابد ولی شب ها، با وزوز و همهمه ی سیناپس ها سر از نازبالشش برمی دارد، نوشابه ی عسلی اش را می نوشد و با تنبلی، رشته ی رؤیاهای میزبانش را درهم می تند... به قصه های مضحک پریان شبیه است. درست همان انسان انگاری رایج قرن نوزدهم. همان خطای متداول فروید در عینی نمایاندن ساختارهای انتزاعی ذهن و مبدل ساختنشان به جن و پری هایی مستقل و مختار. فقط کاش من هم باورش نداشتم!

of course belief increases when fear is greatest. That’s the very point: fear begets belief; we need and want a god, but wishing doesn’t make it so. Belief, no matter how fervent, how pure, how consuming, says nothing whatsoever about the reality of God’s existence.

Kübler-Ross’s “stages” of dying—anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance—never failed to arouse Paula’s ire. She insisted, and I am certain that she was correct, that such rigid categorizing of emotional responses leads to a dehumanization of both patient and doctor.

Cinstea mai presus de toate. Un sceptic convins in toate celelalte privinte, Ernest credea cu o fervoare fundamentalista in forta tamaduitoare a cinstei. Catehismul lui cerea cinste – insa o cinste temperata, selectiva. Si cinste responsabila, plina de grija: cinste in serviciul ingrijirii.

Although the idea of dying had long filled me with dread, I came to prefer the raw dread to some belief whose chief appeal lay in its very absurdity. I have always hated the impregnable declaration, “I believe because it is absurd.” Yet, as a therapist, I keep such sentiments to myself: I know that religious faith is a powerful source of comfort and never to tamper with a belief if I have no better replacement.

in 1972 Governor Ronald Reagan with one bold, brilliant stroke abolished mental illness in California by not only closing the large state psychiatric hospitals but also eradicating most of the public aftercare programs. As a result hospital staffs were forced, day after day, to go through the charade of treating patients and discharging them back into the same noxious setting that had necessitated their hospitalization.

After Paula and I had met for many weeks, we began to make concrete plans to form a group for dying patients. Nowadays, such groups are commonplace and much discussed in magazines and television, but in 1973 there was no precedent: dying was as heavily censored as pornography. Hence, we had to improvise every step of the way. The beginning posed a major hurdle. How to start such a group? How to recruit group members? With a classified ad: “Wanted! Dying people”?

Therapy is a two-person relationship demanding both interaction and exploration of that interaction; real feelings and mutual disclosure about the feelings evoked in the therapy interaction are necessary. Today many progressive psychoanalytic institutes have abandoned the old blank screen model in favor of a new model—the real two-person relationship—and published clinical investigations of that phenomenon—”intersubjectivity” or “two-person” psychology—are now commonplace in the professional literature.

-De aur? Chiar? Zau, Paula, ce poate fi de aur in privinta mortii? -Irv, m-a mustrat Paula, asta e o intrebare gresita! Incearca sa intelegi ca de aur nu e moartea, ci trairea deplina a vietii fata in fata cu moartea. Gandeste-te cat de intense si de pretioase sunt ultimele experiente: ultima primavara, ultimul zbor al pufului de papadie, ultima scuturare a florilor de wisteria. Perioada de aur este, spunea Paula, si vremea marii eliberari – o vreme in care ai libertatea sa zici nu tuturor obligatiilor banale, sa te dedici cu totul lucrurilor de care iti pasa cel mai tare – prezenta prietenilor, anotimpurile care se schimba, unduirea marii.

My heart jumped. “Yes. Yes I do. Chris, go on to the Mayo Clinic without me. I’ll make out fine, and I swear not to marry anyone until you are back and give your approval. Worry about finding someone yourself. After all, I’m not the only woman who resembles our mother.” He flared. “Why the hell do you put it like that? It’s you, not her! It’s everything about you that’s not like her that makes me need and want you so! “Chris, I want a man I can sleep with, who will hold me when I feel afraid, and kiss me, and make me believe I am not evil or unworthy.” My voice broke as tears came. “I wanted to show Momma what I could do, and be the best prima ballerina, but now that Julian’s gone all I want to do is cry when I hear ballet music. I miss him so, Chris.” I put my head on his chest and sobbed. “I could have been nicer to him—then he wouldn’t have struck out in anger. He needed me and I failed him. You don’t need me. You’re stronger than he was. Paul doesn’t really need me either, or he would insist on marrying me right away. . . .” “We could live together, and, and . . .” And here he faltered as his face turned red. I finished for him, “No! Can’t you see it just wouldn’t work?” “No, I guess it wouldn’t work for you,” he said stiffly. “But I’m a fool; I’ve always been a fool, wanting the impossible. I’m even fool enough to want us locked up again, the way we were—with me the only male available to you!” “You don’t mean that!” He seized me in his arms. “Don’t I? God help me but I do mean it! You belonged to me then, and in its own peculiar way our life together made me better than I would have been . . . and you made me want you, Cathy. You could have made me hate you, instead you made me love you.” I shook my head, denying this; I’d only done what came naturally from watching my mother with men. I stared at him, trembling as he released me. I stumbled as I turned to run toward the house. Before me Paul loomed up! Startled I faltered guiltily and stared at him as he turned abruptly and strode in the opposite direction. Oh! He’d been watching and listening! I pivoted about, then raced back to where Chris had his head resting against the trunk of the oldest oak. “See what you’ve done!” I cried out. “Forget me, Chris! I’m not the one and only woman alive!” He appeared blind as he turned his head and he said, “You are for me the only woman alive.

It's best to use all of life. Leave death nothing but the dregs, nothing but a burned-out castle.

I began this process by wondering what it would mean for me to lay Momma to rest. But I did the opposite of laying her to rest—I brought her stories back to life, making her more real to me and less of a stranger. I worked to remember her. I was carrying around her dead body with me before, and now I carry the parts that are alive.

Avevo infranto una delle regole fondamentali della psicoterapia: non strappare via le difese del paziente se non hai niente di meglio da offrirgli in cambio.