#connections

No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the “other echoes [that] inhabit the garden.” It is more rewarding - and more difficult - to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about “us.” But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how “our” culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter). ↗

— Edward W. Said

#culture #humanity #imperialism #labels #survival

Definition of a relationship - an enduring, mutually-agreed upon connection or union, which fulfills certain needs of the individuals involved and the society in which they live. ↗

— Leo Buscaglia

#love #relationships #love

Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death ... And here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book." [Why Reading is Dangerous, Spirit Magazine (Southwest Airlines), February 2008] ↗

— Anthony Doerr

#reading #transformation #death

Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se. ↗

— Charles Eames

#connects #eventually #everything #ideas #key

I wanted to make connections between Whale's past and present. ↗

— Bill Condon

#connections #i #make #past #present

We made connections between the monsters created by war and the monsters he created, the typical outcast that Whale was attracted to, and the monster in himself, that's inside all of us. ↗

— Bill Condon

#between #connections #created #himself #inside

Beneath words and logic are emotional connections that largely direct how we use our words and logic. ↗

— Jane Roberts

#connections #direct #emotional #how #largely

These are ideas. I could say that they just came to me, but it would be more accurate to say that I went to them. Ideas - and new connections between ideas - lead you away from commonly held perceptions of reality. Ideas lead you out here. Ideas lead you into the darkness. ↗

— Dave Sim

#away #between #came #commonly #connections

Soul connections are not often found and are worth every bit of fight left in you to keep. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#friendship #love #spirituality #friendship

social media isn’t about “marketing” your church or message; it’s about “connecting” with people who want to make your story part of their story. ↗

— Phil Cooke

#evangelism #friendship #friendship