Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

Posted on by Live & Learn

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There are two things you have to do if you have big ambitions and want to create something important that lasts. The first is the daily work and trying to keep it at a height that satisfies you. That’s hard. If you succeed, the second is dealing with the effects of the work, managing a career. That’s tricky. It involves making big, real-time decisions about pathways and ways of being. You have to figure out if an opportunity is a true opening or an easy way out; if a desire for security has the potential to become a betrayal of yourself and the thing God gave you, your gift.

— Peggy Noonan, Bob Dylan, a Genius Among Us (wsj.com, June 18, 2020)

Image: via thisisn’thappiness

26 thoughts on “Monday Morning Wake-Up Call”

  2. Until the very end of this quote I thought it was about your reflections and decisions, and then, the spanner in the work, the word GOD….. But you might try to walk a bit in Dylan’s shoes – he was on to something pretty darn good!!!! And his music wasn’t half bad either.
    Have a great Monday, you and all your readers.

      1. By a glitch in ‘their’ system, I was able to quickly copy the whole page and paste it in a mail to myself. Shall read it when I’ve got time. I loved Dylan’s work.

  3. And here again, albeit more beautifully stated, is the stark impact of the human paradox…reaching to realize our potential, appreciating the gifts we’ve been given – while searching for the safe corner where we feel protected and secure.

  4. Thank you. You like my new avatar?
    I’d like to send you my jj ournal excerpt, with permission. I don’t want to post it. I could send it. I don’t want you to see my face. Too old. Too thin…always too something. right
    so that’s why we do it.
    Hide and WRITE
    and keep our eyes and ears open. that’s all.

  5. I can’t fly. With WORDPRESS. I have no nuance here…no shades, not even bold. I guess if you’re a responder…you better shut up and be lucky you’ve invited into the club…right? Oka, I can work with that. Material.

  6. Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
    How to be yourself … “You have to figure out if an opportunity is a true opening or an easy way out; if a desire for security has the potential to become a betrayal of yourself and the thing God gave you, your gift.” — Peggy Noonan, Bob Dylan, a Genius Among Us (wsj.com, June 18, 2020).

    1. You and me baby. This is not a come on line. This is not an act of theater or even poetry. It’s called nothing.
      I can only breathe and respond. I had a great teacher. He’s dead. Of AIDS, 1985.
      He told me, ‘write on the breath.” I have failed him. But I m back. To where I belong. It’s madness out there. It’s truth in here.
      i can only speak…
      to poets. No one follows the metaphors or the images…not even the code writers. I see and and hear. and touch…not these days… Am alone. With my words. THat’s all I need. What I want…is a community. I may have found one. Finally. Maybe not. I’m nothing special. It’s not about me…I just find words… and now it’s that one. Okay, I get it. I’ll keep it hush hush

  8. of course. I am no genius. Only someone who once read “The Little Pilgrim” and ended up in the Psych ward. That’s where some people want me. I work hard. Not being sent there. It’s why I separated from my husband. My husband of 38 years. He never understood my work. DIdn’t even like it. Too FEMALE for him. DUH. I have a man lover. For love. But not sex, much… mainly for the sense of touch.
    You are queen Elizabeth…my favorite queen in history. SHe was tough. And married the state. I can’t marry a state…I’d be locked up and executed…for knowing things and not praying enough. I still pray. I look for poets…. I think I found one…at least for the moment. Stay well. I have a doctor’s appointment…of course. To up my meds…people worry. When I write too much. They should. It’s what I want to do.

  11. After my two days in a row, this is something that hits me between the eyes. Why can’t I see what my “god-given talent” is/are? Am I going to find myself in twenty years STILL searching? Still wasting my time on shit that stinks to me?
    Time for me to wake up.

        1. “Inside the labyrinth the two-dimensional surface ceased to be open space one could move across anyhow. Keeping to the winding path became important, and with one’s eyes fixed upon it, the space of the labyrinth became large and compelling. The very first length of path after the entrance almost reaches the center of the eleven rings, then turns away to snake round and round, nearer and farther, never so close as that initial promise until long afterward, when the walker has slowed down and become absorbed in the journey—which even on a maze forty feet in diameter like this can take a quarter hour or more. That circle became a world whose rules I lived by, and I understood the moral of mazes: sometimes you have to turn your back on your goal to get there, sometimes you’re farthest away when you’re closest, sometimes the only way is the long one. After that careful walking and looking down, the stillness of arrival was deeply moving. I looked up at last to see that white clouds like talons and feathers were tumbling east in a blue sky. It was breathtaking to realize that in the labyrinth, metaphors and meanings could be conveyed spatially. That when you seem farthest from your destination is when you suddenly arrive is a very pat truth in words, but a profound one to find with your feet.”

          — Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Penguin Books (June 1, 2001)

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