“Juventud, divino tesoro, ¡ya te vas para no volver! Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro… y a veces lloro sin querer. / Youth, divine treasure, leaves you never to return! When I want to cry, I don’t… and sometimes I cry without wanting to.”

— Canción de Otoño en Primavera / Rubén Darío

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, giver orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

— Robert Heinlein

“You will not soon be pardoned by the hours; hours that erode the fabric of our days, days that our years inevitably gnaw.”

— “De la brevedad engañosa de la vida” / Luis de Góngora

Up in the Air

How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life… you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV… the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home… I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office… and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks. 

-Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney) / Up in the Air 


Back to Top