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“The gap that was created during those transatlantic voyages hundreds of years ago.
That gap is the matrix of Saudade – The Longing, I think, that all Africans in the West have, that is at the root of the blues and jazz and soul and rap. If you listen you can hear it, elusive, fleeting, full of melancholy anger.”
― A Parallel Life
That gap is the matrix of Saudade – The Longing, I think, that all Africans in the West have, that is at the root of the blues and jazz and soul and rap. If you listen you can hear it, elusive, fleeting, full of melancholy anger.”
― A Parallel Life
“Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.”
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“Just as trees need roots in the earth, man is also a tree and needs roots in existence or else he will live a very unintelligent life.”
― Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other
― Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other
“We're experiencing the genesis of a community where it does not matter where your roots lie, but what you believe in. We will continue to create an inclusive and sustainable spirit, spreading the word from coast to mountaintop.”
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“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
― The Midnight Library
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
― The Midnight Library
Rebecca van Eijk’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Rebecca van Eijk’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
144 books
|
80 friends
1,249 books
|
198 friends
75 books
|
98 friends
10 books
|
85 friends
342 books
|
174 friends
340 books
|
45 friends
155 books
|
102 friends
177 books
|
46 friends
More friends…
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