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A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.

Mary Catherine Bateson

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

Forget Human Natural Sacred Society
The past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Empowerment Future Leadership Present
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
We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Known Learning Willing
Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Blink Definition Goal
Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Eat Food Human
There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Bad Metaphor Toxic Yourself
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
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
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
Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Care Design Human Learning Need Society Work
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
Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Demand Give Share
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
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 Christian tradition was passed on to me as a great rich mixture, a bouillabaisse of human imagination and wonder brewed from the richness of individual lives.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Greatness Imagination Live Tradition