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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

A disgruntled reflection on my own life as a sort of desperate improvisation in which I was constantly trying to make something coherent from conflicting elements to fit rapidly changing settings.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Conflict Desperate Element Improvisation Reflection
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
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
The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Capacity Commitment Democracy Essential
Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Definition Problem Solution
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
Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Blink Definition Goal
We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Known Learning Willing
Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

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

Forget Human Natural Sacred Society
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
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
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