![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[FM] FEBRUARY - E.M. Forster Quote
Feb. 8th, 2007 03:34 pm"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." - E.M. Forster
When I was teaching at Harvard, I often threw that quote at my students more than once during a semester. The ones that found it pretentious never stayed long...the ones that found it funny that I quoted a gay 19th century novelist who fell in love with a seventeen year old Middle Eastern boy usually made the best progress. It was the ones who took it to heart, though, that went on to truly great things.
You see, I offered it up in an effort to emphasize the fact that one must go into the world with an open mind and a desire for real truth, regardless of how fantastic truth might be. It could be religion, faith, science or bloody grocery shopping, but truth is truth, unchanging.
I had a rather lovely life planned out...well, planned out for me more than anything. Go to school, become a doctor...do right by the Keel family name. But then I found Truth, with a capital ‘T,’ as Lorelai might say.Have I mentioned that I love you today, sweetheart? I found it on the moors while studying English ravens. My dead mother’s voice came to me in the midst of a tape recording of ravensong...and I let go of my safe little plan. It took some time, some work..and some fortitude, but I started on my path to Truth, and here I remain.
We all want a certain life for ourselves...but it’s not always the life we were born to live. A mathematician can aspire to dreams of being a poet, but his gifts will always take him back to the world of the concrete rather than the esoteric artist’s realm. A warrior may dream of peace, but one day, he will once again find himself in the heat of battle.
It’s not easy...but it’s the way things are. I know only this for certain...had I earned my medical degree and forged a nice little practice in Blackpool or London...I never would have gone to Star’s Hollow, and I never would have met Lorelai Gilmore.
She is the life that waits for me now...and I would not trade it for anything in all the world.
Muse: Alva Keel
Fandom: Miracles
Words: 374
When I was teaching at Harvard, I often threw that quote at my students more than once during a semester. The ones that found it pretentious never stayed long...the ones that found it funny that I quoted a gay 19th century novelist who fell in love with a seventeen year old Middle Eastern boy usually made the best progress. It was the ones who took it to heart, though, that went on to truly great things.
You see, I offered it up in an effort to emphasize the fact that one must go into the world with an open mind and a desire for real truth, regardless of how fantastic truth might be. It could be religion, faith, science or bloody grocery shopping, but truth is truth, unchanging.
I had a rather lovely life planned out...well, planned out for me more than anything. Go to school, become a doctor...do right by the Keel family name. But then I found Truth, with a capital ‘T,’ as Lorelai might say.
We all want a certain life for ourselves...but it’s not always the life we were born to live. A mathematician can aspire to dreams of being a poet, but his gifts will always take him back to the world of the concrete rather than the esoteric artist’s realm. A warrior may dream of peace, but one day, he will once again find himself in the heat of battle.
It’s not easy...but it’s the way things are. I know only this for certain...had I earned my medical degree and forged a nice little practice in Blackpool or London...I never would have gone to Star’s Hollow, and I never would have met Lorelai Gilmore.
She is the life that waits for me now...and I would not trade it for anything in all the world.
Muse: Alva Keel
Fandom: Miracles
Words: 374
