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Lynette

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“The trouble with good fortune is that we tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and less well for others, it’s assumed they must have done something to have brought that misfortune on themselves while we must have worked harder to avoid it. We speak of ourselves as being blessed, but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more? It is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness and find equality where none may have existed in the past.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays

29 likes

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lots of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays

2 likes

“People want you to want what they want. If you want the same things they want, then their want is validated. If you don’t want the same things, your lack of wanting can, to certain people, come across as judgment.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays

tags: judgement, want

35 likes

“Somewhere deep in my twisted little brain is the desire to be so good at so many things that I earn the chance to be multiple people. It seems so unfair that we only get to read the choose-your-own adventure book of our lives once, that we can't pick a point and go, "Okay, this time flip to page 102 and do the rest another way.”
― Mary Laura Philpott, I Miss You When I Blink: Essays

8 likes

“All you have to do,” he tells me, “is give a little bit of understanding to the possibility that life might not have been fair.” The trouble with good fortune is that we tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and less well for others, it’s assumed they must have done something to have brought that misfortune on themselves while we must have worked harder to avoid it. We speak of ourselves as being blessed, but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more? It is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness and find equality where none may have existed in the past.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays

4 likes

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