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| Thomas Merton photo by John Howard Griffin via an article by Daniel Esparza in 'Aleteia' |
"You think you can identify a man by giving his date of birth and his address, his height, his eyes’ colour, even his fingerprints. Such information will help you put the right tag on his body if you should run across his body somewhere full of bullets, but it doesn’t say anything about the man himself ... If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”―Thomas Merton, from his autobiographical novel My Argument with the Gestapo [hat tip Carrie-Ann Biondi]
1 comment:
It's taken me decades to come to this realisation, but I now firmly believe that most of us spend too much energy concerned with what we think is "keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for", and not enough on "what I am living for" here and now. To some degree it's part of the human condition to always be dissatisfied with our current state and be looking for something better, without which there would be no progress; but it's easy to go too far. I recently heard a psychologist say there's two main things needed for a healthy sense of self - agency and gratitude. Agency in terms of confidence to change your future and adapt whatever life throws at you, and gratitude for what you already have. I think he nailed it.
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