Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.
Happening
I do think that something of the effect I have on people is to put everything on an edge where they’re both infatuated with a kind of charmingness happening in the person or in the writing, and also flatly terrified by a revelation or acceptance of revelation that’s almost happening, never quite totally happening.
To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.
Look at what’s happening in this world. Every day there’s something exciting or disturbing to write about. With all that’s going on, how could I stop?
Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond – had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.
If you have this idea that the earth is only 6,000 years old, you are denying, if you will, everything that you can touch and see. You’re not paying attention to what’s happening in the universe around you.
Adolescence was only recognised as a life stage in the early 20th century, when psychologists got down to work. Today’s generational battle obscures the fact that adulthood is happening later. A new transitional stage has emerged after adolescence: the twenties.
No matter what is happening in life or in the world – war, natural disaster, poor health, pain, the death of loved ones – if existence is filled with art, music and literature, life will be fulfilling, a joy.
I am upset and completely disappointed in the government, the millionaires and billionaires in the U.S. See what’s happening to the country? Look at all the health problems, the economy, the recession and crime.
Africa is going through its own historical process of state formation just as Europe and America did. It is just happening much later than other continents because of the interruption of Africa’s own historical development by the colonization of Africa by Europe.