Meghan Daum > Quotes

“Life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally — and sometimes maddeningly — who we are.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“distance is not for the fearful, it's for the bold. It's for those who are willing to spend a lot of time alone in exchange for a little time with the one they love. It's for those who know a good thing when they see it, even if they don't see it nearly enough”
― Meghan Daum

“Analyzing data from 79 men and women who wore inconspicuous devices that recorded some of their conversations over the course of four days, researchers from Washington University and the University of Arizona found a correlation between feelings of well-being and the amount of time spent talking every day. Moreover, the more substantive your conversations, the happier you're likely to be. In other words, heart-to-hearts trump small talk. (LA Times, "A lof of happy talk", March 11, 2010, A21.)”
― Meghan Daum

“What I miss is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life. But what I forget is the loneliness of all that. If everything is ahead then nothing is behind. You have no ballast. You have no tailwinds either. You hardly ever know what to do, because you’ve hardly done anything. I guess this is why wisdom is supposed to be the consolation prize of aging. It’s supposed to give us better things to do than stand around and watch in disbelief as the past casts long shadows over the future.”
― Meghan Daum

“To have an old dog is to look into the eyes of the sweetest soul you know and see traces of the early light of the worst day of your life.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“Listen,” Older Self might say. “The things that right now seem permanently out of reach, you’ll reach them eventually. You’ll have a career, a house, a partner in life. You will have much better shoes. You will reach a point where your funds will generally be sufficient—maybe not always plentiful, but sufficient.” But here’s what Older Self will not have the heart to say: some of the music you are now listening to—the CDs you play while you stare out the window and think about the five million different ways your life might go—will be unbearable to listen to in twenty years. They will be unbearable not because they will sound dated and trite but because they will sound like the lining of your soul. They will take you straight back to the place you were in when you felt that anything could happen at any time, that your life was a huge room with a thousand doors, that your future was not only infinite but also elastic. They will be unbearable because they will remind you that at least half of the things you once planned for your future are now in the past and others got reabsorbed into your imagination before you could even think about acting on them. It will be as though you’d never thought of them in the first place, as if they were never meant to be anything more than passing thoughts you had while playing your stereo at night.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn't the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that's actually the easy part. The hard part is what's right in front of you. The hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life.”
― Meghan Daum, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House

“In the history of the world, a whole story has never been told.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“There are many controversial issues in contemporary American politics where, in spite of my strong feelings, I have the ability to understand and respect the other side. But the notion that we could ever pretend women have real equality in this country when a man as uninformed about basic reproductive gynecology as Mr. Todd Akin could take away my right to decide whether I want to spend a minimum of eighteen years and an average of $235,000 raising a child—not to mention the significant cost to my own dreams and goals or the myriad ways my child might ultimately suffer for my having been denied the ability to make that choice, the ways so many children suffer every day at the hands of their frustrated, stultified mothers—is an absurdity.”
― Meghan Daum, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids

“My goal in life is to be content. By that I don't mean "fine" or "basically satisfied." I don't mean settling. I mean, for last of better terms, feeling like I'm in the right life.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“For my mother’s entire life, her mother was less a mother than splintered bits of shrapnel she carried around in her body, sharp, rusty debris that threatened to puncture an organ if she turned a certain way.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“I am not and will never again be a young writer, a young homeowner, a young teacher. I was never a young wife. The only thing I could do now for which my youth would be a truly notable feature would be to die. If I died now, I’d die young. Everything else, I’m doing middle-aged.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“It would be about one of life's most reliable disappointments, which is that your audience, no matter how small, is always bigger than those who actually understand what you're saying.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“The idea of loving someone no matter what they do is overrated, not to mention largely impossible.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“Also, I was coming up on my five year anniversary of owning the house, and if there's anything I've learned in five years, it's this: if a piece of your house falls off and you don't know what to do with it, throwing it in the trash and forgetting about it is a perfectly viable option.”
― Meghan Daum, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House

“I can tell you that the comfort zone has many upsides. It may be associated with sloth and cowardice and any number of paralyzing, irrational phobias. It may be a dark abyss where misunderstood people lie around in fading recliners listening to outdated music. But I’m convinced that, when handled responsibly, the comfort zone can be as useful and productive as a well-oiled industrial zone. I am convinced that excellence comes not from overcoming limitations but from embracing them. At least that’s what I’d say if I were delivering a TED Talk. I’d never say such a douchy thing in private conversation.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“It’s about time we stop mistaking self-knowledge for self-absorption—and realize that nobody has a monopoly on selfishness.”
― Meghan Daum, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids

“It is why I hope that if I make it to eighty-something I have the good sense not to pull out those old CDs. My heart, by then, surely would not be able to keep from imploding. My heart, back then, stayed in one piece only because, as bursting with anticipation as it was, it had not yet been strained by nostalgia. It had not yet figured out that life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally - and sometimes maddeningly - who we are.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“No matter where they are or who they’re with, dogs are incapable of being anything but themselves. Show me a dog that puts on airs or laughs politely at an unfunny joke and I’ll show you a human in a dog costume, possibly one owned and licensed by the Walt Disney Company.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“If the desire to have children is just a way to build some noisy tribe of distraction around oneself, then I'd rather be alone.”
― Meghan Daum, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids

“When you talk of not wanting children, it is impossible to avoid sounding defensive, like you're trying to prove the questionable beauty of a selfish and too-tidy existence.”
― Meghan Daum, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids

“My heart, back then, stayed in one piece only because, as bursting with anticipation as it was, it had not yet been strained by nostalgia. It had not yet figured out that life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally - and sometimes maddeningly - who we are.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“In other words, when women acquire critical skills and starting weighing their options they soon wise up to the fact that they're not getting enough recompense for their labors. In trade union terms, you'd call it a production slowdown...”
― Meghan Daum, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids

“What I miss is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life. But what I forget is the loneliness of all that. If everything is ahead then nothing is behind. You have no ballast. You have no tailwinds either. You hardly ever know what to do, because you’ve hardly done anything. I guess this is why wisdom is supposed to be the consolation prize of aging. It’s supposed to give us better things to do than stand around and watch in disbelief as the past casts long shadows over the future. The problem, I now know, is that no one ever really feels wise, least of all those who actually have it in themselves to be so. The Older Self of our imagination never quite folds itself into the older self we actually become. Instead, it hovers in the perpetual distance like a highway mirage. It’s the destination that never gets any closer even as our life histories pile up behind us in the rearview mirror. It is the reason that I got to forty-something without ever feeling thirty-something. It is why I hope that if I make it to eighty-something I have the good sense not to pull out those old CDs. My heart, by then, surely would not be able to keep from imploding. My heart, back then, stayed in one piece only because, as bursting with anticipation as it was, it had not yet been strained by nostalgia. It had not yet figured out that life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally—and sometimes maddeningly—who we are.”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“If there's anything I've learned in twenty-five years, it's that the more honest you are about what you think, the more you sit in solitude with your own thoughts.”
― Meghan Daum, The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars

“But it’s the temptation of so many suburban-raised children to invent tales of adversity, to create hardscrabble mythologies out of life histories marked by little more than field hockey games and orthodontist appointments.”
― Meghan Daum, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House: A Memoir

“What's more, a lot of people who harbor an intolerance for complexity see it not as a character flaw but a cognitive virtue. That's because they've fallen into the trap of believing that complicated ideas ("complicated" now constituting anything that requires reading, watching or listening to in its entirety) are the purview of the "elite.”
― Meghan Daum

“I managed to have such a mediocre time at a place that is pretty much custom designed for delivering the best years of your life. I’d like to say that I wasn’t the same person back then that I later became and now am. But the truth is that I was the exact same person. I was more myself then than at any other time in my life. I was an extreme version of myself. Everything I’ve always felt I felt more intensely. Everything I’ve always wanted, I wanted more. Everything I currently dislike, I downright hated back then. People who think I’m judgmental, impatient, and obsessed with real estate now should have seen me in college. I was bored by many of my classmates and irked by the contrived mischief and floundering sexual intrigues of dormitory life. I couldn’t wait to get out and rent my own apartment, preferably one in a grand Edwardian building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In that sense, I guess my college experience was just as intense as my husband’s. I just view that intensity negatively rather than nostalgically, which perhaps is its own form of nostalgia.”
― Meghan Daum

“life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“The path of least resistance has a lot going for it. The comfort zone isn't where you lose yourself. It's where you find yourself.”
― Meghan Daum