More thoughts that aren’t mine
This is a quote I got from another blog–the blog of a SALTer in Egypt. She was writing about a party she was at with a lot of Egyptian Muslim men, breaking down stereotypes, the fact that we get our information about people from news and not relationship, etc. It’s a good blog. If you’d like to visit, here’s the link.
And here’s the quote. It resonates with me, here in China, possibly in a different way than it does to the girl in Egypt. Addressing fear (something that, with the help of God, I’ve been working to banish from my life) and stereotypes together.
“For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed. It is shyness, before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. For only he who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive, and will draw exhaustively from his own existence.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke, in Letter 7, from Letters to a Young Poet
Tags: China, Travel
Christina
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