Quote of the Week...from Madeleine L'Engle

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.
                                                              ---Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle  was a renowned author of children's books, most famous for her Time series that opened with the 1962 book A Wrinkle in Time...now adapted to a new movie currently out in theaters and starring Storm Reid (great acting), Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Chris Pine, among others.  I just saw it with Melissa this past Saturday and was duly impressed...I wish all film adaptations of books I read were as faithful to the spirit, characters, and flow of the story.   Go see it...but first I recommend you read the book.  I read it back in June, 2015...here's my review: [link]...

There's a corollary to the above quote, and it's also from Madeleine L'Engle: You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children. I like her take on aging and writing, as exemplified by these two quotes. She should know, having lived a full life (passing away in 2007 at age 88) with a gift at writing for the younger reading audience...

As sentient beings, we humans...regardless of our current age...have this duality in our lives that we each have to deal with, some of us more successful at it than the rest.  On one hand our past experiences, accumulated over the course of a lifetime, determine to a great extent who we are in the present.  So in a significant way, we are who we were...as the first quote of l"Engle would indicate.  This tends to come out in the difference between how people see themselves and how others see them...let me explain...

When folks know each other well over a span of time and have built up memories of each other, they tend to regard each other based more on those memories and less on how each one really is in the present...this causes a resistance to accepting change in others with whom one is familiar.  On the other hand, when people are strangers they tend to judge one another strictly on their behavior and appearance in the present...understandable since they have nothing else to go on, but still unrealistic in that we all have our own respective pasts that help to define our presents.  But L'Engle takes a more positive approach to being able to draw upon our pasts while we live in the present...we are each of us, after all, individual, unique tapestries spanning the years...