Quotes About Adaptation

Depression as Denial of the Self Depression consists of a denial of one's own emotional reactions. This denial begins in the service of an absolutely essential adaptation during childhood and indicates a very early injury. There are many children who have not been free, right from the beginning, to experience the very simplest of feelings, such as discontent, anger, rage, pain, even hunger—and, of course, enjoyment of their own bodies.

She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herb tea which is now her substitute for coffee. At one time she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it is really the warm large mug she wants in her hands, that is the aid to thought or whatever it is she practices through the procession of hours, or of days.

She starts to get used to being sacrificed

My history and civilization are literally melting; everyone knows.

Netuno introduz tendências, mas Urano produz mudanças abruptas. [...] O importante é lembrar que [em Urano] é imperativo ver as coisas a partor de um nível diferente ou sofrer as consequências.

Os deuses de uma era se tornam os demônios da seguinte ou, quando não têm destino semelhante, acabam em ambiente mais seguro nos contos de fadas ou, como nos dias de hoje, em histórias em quadrinhos. Uma onda de iconiclastia comumente se forma a cada mudança das eras astrológicas, e os objetos ou 'as coisas' antes venerados são feitos em pedaços por escavações arqueológicas séculos depois.

very nearly anonymous now having recently turned five thousand with the same wedge of yearning lodged in my chest as ever and getting accustomed to surviving like a bramble very good at growing anywhere you ought to praise me for this trailing bloom

All the different ways of talking English I throw together like a salad and dine greedily in my mongrel tongue.

I had surprised myself this year by jumping in to reshape my life before life stepped in to reshape it for me.

In fact, most things that threaten to last forever often become quite annoying.

When the children were very small I spent weeks alone with them high up in the Welsh hills and I used to lose the power of speech. I would return to London bereft of all vocabulary, communicating in grunts and diddums talk. You feel a fool asking, for instance, Professor Sir Alfred Ayer if he would care for an icky bitty more soup in his ickle bowl.

I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same time, there's a real lightheartedness about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they're not the same, ever again.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that's going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

In nature, nothing is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they're still beautiful.

Our entire culture's infrastructure encourages and rewards a static, unchanging nature. You choose one degree, one career, one house, one spouse... You earn prestige by appearing to have it all figured out. The American Dream isn't having it all, it's knowing it all.

I lived with my mom in a really small apartment. My bedroom was like in the living room. That's why I still love to sleep on couches now.

I now see so clearly what escaped me then: It's not that the ground underneath me was suddenly shifting; it's that it is never still. That's part of the work of my journey—getting comfortable with life's groundlessness.

Nothing but uncertainty is uncertain. Circumstances come together, only to fall apart moments or months later. And then, in a flash, we must rise up again and regain our footing. In the rearview mirror, I now see so clearly what escaped me then: It's not that the ground underneath me was suddenly shifting; it's that it is never still. That's part of the work my journey - getting comfortable with life's groundlessness.

We adjust ourselves to fit, to adapt to others' ideas of who we should be. We shift ourselves not in sweeping pivots, but in movements so tiny that they are hardly perceptible, even in our view. Years can pass before we finally discover that, after handing over our power piece by small piece, we no longer even look like ourselves.

Acting is magical. Change your look and your attitude, and you can be anyone.

Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief.

It was not a triumphal return. Home, as I had known it, was gone.

Leaving home but going back home: once you crossed the ocean you were always on the wrong side. That was the lot of the immigrant, belonging everywhere but nowhere. Displaced, and unplaced.

I tried to become a hawk, it didn't work. I think I got -stuck