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Alone by Maya Angelou – Poems | Academy of American Poets

I used to think friendship was
sleepovers and play dates.
Now I know it’s not.
Friendship is three in the morning talks
about what happened the day before
and why the hell you’re still awake.
Friendship is three in the afternoon
laughing so hard you’re on the floor at a
corny joke for the third time that day.
Friendship is sitting there eating in
silence because you would rather eat
than talk (and they would too).
Friendship is love in the strangest ways
when all else is lost.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in a myriad, petty, unsexy ways everyday. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness. The default setting, the rat race, the constant, gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

“Be regular and orderly in your life so you can be violent and original in your work”.

12 Dec

13 Dec

Chapter 12 of The death of Ivan Ilyich begins thus.