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Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

Mary Catherine Bateson

When parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Death Parents Realization Return Time
Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Demand Give Share
Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Definition Problem Solution
In many ways, constancy is an illusion.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Constant Illusion
Jazz exemplifies artistic activity that is at once individual and communal, performance that is both repetitive and innovative, each participant sometimes providing background support and sometimes flying free.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Activity Artistic Community Fly Freedom Provide
As we age we have not only to readdress earlier developmental crises but also somehow to find the way to three affirmations that may seem to conflict. … We have to affirm our own life. We have to affirm our own death. And we have to affirm love, both given and received.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Address Affirmation Conflict Development Early Finding Ourselves
A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Care Management Medicine Surprise Training
Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Believe Learning Myself Talk Understand
As you get up in the morning, as you make decisions, as you spend money, make friends, make commitments, you are creating a piece of art called your life.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Commitment Decision Life Morning People Pieces Yourself
The critical question about regret is whether experience led to growth and new learning. Some people seem to keep on making the same mistakes, while others at least make new ones. Regret and remorse can be either paralyzing or inspiring.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Criticism Growth Mistake Oneself Question Regret
There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Bad Metaphor Toxic Yourself
Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Creativity Establishment Improvisation Way
Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Goodness Life Place Remain Willing
Fear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Fear Forget Goodness Philosophy Teacher Wisdom
Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Continue Fluid Live Reality
Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Children Finding Togetherness World