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There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.

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

Constant Illusion
Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Affirmation Education Existing Member Tradition
Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Answer Finding Fragment Learning Pattern Pleasure Share
The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Change Family Metaphor Understand
Fear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Fear Forget Goodness Philosophy Teacher Wisdom
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
We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Known Learning Willing
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
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
There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Bad Metaphor Toxic Yourself
Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Forget Human Natural Sacred Society
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
Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Eat Food Human
Monotony and repetition are characteristic of many parts of life, but these do not become sources of conscious discomfort until novelty and entertainment are built up as positive experiences.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Character Entertainment Experience Life Positive Repetition
Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Definition Problem Solution