Hello again, Hello

I have been inspired this week many times over, by looking at incredible quotes by incredible people. I plan to use the quotes with some calligraphy in my ETSY shop as I make ACEOs, cards, and scrapbook pages.

It is fascinating to look at quotes, because I realize that they are fragments of sentence or paragraph taken out of context. Often we want to explain ourselves, and we provide lots of context so that the listener (or reader) understands what we really are trying to communicate. And this is critical to effective communication, and is the hard part too - saying things so that the other person really understands our points, our state of mind, our perspectives, our concerns.

But astoundingly enough, some of the most inspirational statements that I read or hear are quotes - and they are completely out of context. For example - "I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision." Eleanor Roosevelt said this, and the context is completely absent as this is a sentence that stands alone in the public domain.

But oh, what a wonderful sentence, what a deeply touching and moving and profound comment. What a statement about our lives.

Maybe quotes touch us because we place them into our personal context, and make them our very own. We agree with them - or disagree with them, we respond to them, we weave them into the fiber of our being and grow them into action and attitude.

So to end this musing with another from Eleanor - "Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one."