Textbook Advice

Wisdom can be found in the most interesting places. I found this quote the other day from a book I've been using for my Advanced Composition class.

"Many people, especially young people, think that variety of sensation is what gives spice to life. They want to do everything, go everywhere, meet everybody and drink from every bottle. It can't be done. Whoever you are, your energies and your opportunities are limited. Of course you want to try several alternatives in order to find out what suits you, but I hope that ten years from today you will agree with me that the good life is not lived widely, but deeply. It is not doing things, but understanding what what you do, that brings real excitement and lasting pleasure.

You should start now. It is dangerously easy to get into a pattern of life, and if you live shallowly until you are thirty, it will not be easy to begin living deeply. . . . How are you to avoid [the fate of shallowness]? I can tell you, but it is not a magic secret which will transform your life. It is very, very difficult. What you must do is to spend twenty-three hours of every day of your life doing whatever fall in your way, whether it be duty or pleasure or necessary for your health and physical well-being. But--and this the difficult thing--you must set aside one hour of your life every day for yourself, in which you attempt to understand what you are doing."

From "What Every Girl Should Know" in Model Voices: Finding a Writing Voice p. 515