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Quote by Steven Magee

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Steven Magee

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“So, as I sit shaking in my boots and shitting my pants at the mere thought of all this change — of these paradigm shifts that are unseen in any lifetime before ours — I keep reminding myself, always be a beginner, always realize there is something to learn, always remember that you know far less than you think. Be a novice. Be a blank page. Be embryonic in your sense of yourself. You are just learning the steps. You are just starting out. It is okay to be stupid or blind or to not have the answers. It is okay to be wrong, to make mistakes, and to muck it all up. This is all part of the process of becoming. Of enlightenment. Of living. Love it all. The confusion. The mess. The raw, red rims of your eyes. Love the experience of being born. Love the experience of watching the old way of life die. Watch everything burn. Watch everything go. Don’t be afraid. This. This is how you find your way. You don’t notice the changes as they come. You just wake up, one bright morning — sky the color of robin’s eggs — and you realize that you are there. And you open the door and smell the restless air and say a prayer of profound thanks.”

“It would seem as if progress would benefit the underprivileged above all others, but in reality it is oftener the case that the townspeople are more disposed to consent to radical change; their frenetic environment fosters a sort of flightiness that must be appeased by resorting to anything which resembles a novelty. All of this is a requisite for large towns, for the intricate connection of enterprises, occupations and maintenances requires all citizens to have a tractable disposition, lest everything collapse by the idleness of the obdurate mind. Peasants, however, live by the old ways. Nay, even if they be destitute or famished, they shall nevertheless not fail to adhere to those values which they and their antecedents have always esteemed, because that is how they have always lived, and shall always live. Their environment is serene, and they need not follow novelty to maintain their livelihoods. If one imprisons an animal for a protracted period of time, it shall eventually forgo the taste of freedom. And so these former slaves – for that is essentially what they were four years ago – have become dependent on the fetters, and cannot continue to endure without complete subservience.”