Quotes from Mary Catherine Bateson

Sorting gets harder as time goes on--it requires a sort of ruthless decisiveness, while indecision results in endless dithering. Five moves, they say, equal a fire. But those who haven't moved may begin to need a fire. [p. 38]

As people grow older, some of the ways they have contributed in the past may no longer be possible, but the challenge to society is not only to provide help and care where these are needed but also to offer the opportunity to contribute and care for others [p. 8]

Since few people arrive at retirement with an understanding that this transition will involve a rethinking of who they are, an interim pattern has emerged, in which travel offers a way of fulfilling deferred daydreams of adventure while the next stage takes shape. [p. 31]

Part of the task of composing a life is the artist's need to find a way to take what is simply ugly and, instead of trying to deny it, to use it in the broader design.

active wisdom --an entire cohort with something new to offer to the world as years of experience combined with continuing health. [p. 52]

It's all about being in control of myself as an older woman who lives alone, and it's all about how I am going to do what I have to do to be as strong as I can be and be confident that I can do what I need to do as an older person. [p. 62]

After all, most of us have lived lives based on commitments made without any way of knowing where they would lead. The uncertainty is an essential element in commitment, the acceptance of consequences an essential element in fidelity. [p. 80]

For some of us, "chauvinism" is simply a shortening of "male chauvinism." For others, it is a reminder of the dangers of devotion to the superiority of any group, gender, race, religion, or nation, or even to the truths of any era.

A certain amount of friction is inevitable whenever peoples of different customs and assumptions meet.... What is miraculous is how often it is possible to work together to sustain joint performances in spite of disparate codes, evoking different belief systems to affirm that possibility.

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what proceeds it.

So this little boy was--I became her confidant a little too early, I think. It didn't seem to warp me exactly, but it left me with a little too much knowledge at an early age. [p. 143]

There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors.

A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.

The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.

The past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.

Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.

Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a really nice man who wishes she were not.

The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.

The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.

If you compare statistics on different types of households, you find that the presence of an adult male means more additional work for the woman than the presence of a child under ten, even when the man believes himself to be sharing the housework equally.*

I have always tended to look to the special circumstances of my childhood whenever I felt unhappy or lacking in confidence, and yet it is not reasonable to attribute a degree of estrangement that is part of the general human condition to a particular idiosyncratic experience.

Monotony and repetition are characteristic of many parts of life, but these do not become sources of conscious discomfort until noveltyt and entertainmet are built up as positive experiences.

Death is also the moment of a gift that the old give to the young, a last opportunity to teach about life, but is so shaped by accident and happenstance that the moment may pass and wisdom is often unexpressed. The young stand by, wanting to give back to their parents some fraction of the care given to them, hoping that their parents will meet death in a way that softens the anticipation of death in their own lives and reconfirms their sense of the integrity or generosity of their parents.