Do you understand? When I am done telling you these stories, when you’re done listening to these stories, I am no longer I, and you are no longer you. In this afternoon we briefly merged into one. After this, you will always carry a bit of me, and I will always carry a bit of you, even if we both forget this conversation.

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.

But maybe you don’t need to be explainable. Maybe the most interesting perspectives come from being willing to occupy a difficult-to-define place, even if it means sacrificing others' understanding of you. The challenge then becomes committing to occupy that place far longer than most feel comfortable — long enough to cultivate a voice out of your curiosity that is confident enough in its own continuity to tell you exactly what’s worth committing to when the time comes.

disrupt the embodiment and perception of the interior as merely a container of the human experience

“dissolution of the self” as an entity inseparable from the universe

produce alternative senses of time and space

create simultaneously objective and subjective perceptions of the self and the environment

“I’m too old” is something we tell ourselves to save ourselves from the emotional cost of the ego deflation involved in being a beginner.

Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way (p. 138). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.

| Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine