Friday, December 19, 2014

What We Learn From

Television commercials give such a strange view of what life is supposed to be. And a lot of people buy it. Life is not easy and comfortable, with nothing ever going wrong as long as you buy the right product. It’s not true that if you have the right insurance everything is going to be fine. That’s not what it’s really like. Terrible things happen. And those are the things that we learn from.

--Madeleine L'Engle

2 comments:

Katya said...

I can't really go with the onesideness of this.

The day I got a positive result on my first pregnancy test--I learned something. The day I gave birth--I learned something.

Just to select two life experiences (one of which included a fair amount of physical pain for me), not completely at random...

Yes, I certainly learned some other kinds of things the day when the airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York city.

But I don't think an experience needs to be a harsh trial or a disaster to have something to teach to me.

G. Verloren said...

Katya, I think you're misinterpretated the quote.

I didn't read the commentary as being "we only learn from terrible things". I saw it as being "television commericals are bizarrely disconnected from reality" - which I rather think they are.