
Mingle the starlight with your lives and you won’t be fretted by trifles.*
(Maria Mitchell)
I am constantly struck dumb by this mystery [just atoms and molecules].**
(Alan Lightman)
If you want to explain yourself, you’ll need the right words.
In her describing of a children’s book What Miss Mitchell Saw, which tells the story of the 19th century astronomer‘s early life, Maria Popova observes:
Names become a central trope in the book – the dignifying, truth-affirming act of calling all realities by their true names.^
This includes you and me.
Before we find our true names we must find the words that are important to us:
finding the words is another step in learning to see^^.
We each are made up of many wonderful and extraordinary words.
Then may we find our true name, the one that is an adventure and not a prison.
(*Maria Mitchell, quoted in Maria Popova’s brain Pickings: Favourite Children’s Books of 2019.)
(**From Alan Lightman’s Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine.)
(^From Maria Popova’s brain Pickings: Favourite Children’s Books of 2019.)
(^^Robin Wall Kimmerer, quoted in Maria Popova’s brain Pickings: Favourite Children’s Books of 2019.)