I discovered this little book at a beach house in Yachats, OR. A bit simplistic but resonant, particulary since I read it as it was written: in solitude at the sea."Yeats once said that the supreme experience of life was 'to share profound thought and then to touch.' But it takes both.""And when we are tired of walking, we lie flat on the sand under a bowl of stars. We feel stretched, expanded to take in their compass. They pour into us until we are filled with stars, up to the brim. One thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide." "I am again faced with woman's recurring lesson: woman must come of age by herself, she must find her true center alone. The lesson seems to need relearning about every twenty years in a woman's life.""Even those whose lives had appeared to be ticking imperturbably under their smiling clock-faces were often trying, like me, to evolve another rhythm with more creative pauses in it, more adjustment to their individual needs, and new and more alive relationships to themselves as well as others.""I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus when he said, 'May the outward and inward man be at one.'""The problem is how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery.""I shall ask into my shell only those friends with whom I can be completely honest. I find I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask.""It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. ... Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.""Is this then what happens to woman? She wants perpetually to spill herself away. All her instinct as a woman -- the eternal nourisher of children, of men, of society -- demands that she give. Her time, her energy, her creativeness drain out into these channels if there is any chance, any leak. Eternally, woman spills herself away in driblets to the thirsty, seldom being allowed the time, the quiet, the peace, to let the pitcher fill up to the brim.""Hunger cannot, of course, be fed merely by a feeling of indispensability. Even purposeful giving must have some source that refills it. ... Every person should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day. How revolutionary that sounds and how impossible of attainment. ... Herein lies the problem. If women were convinced that a day off or an hour of solitude was a reasonable ambition, they would find a way of attaining it. As it is, they feel so unjustified in their demand that they rarely make the attempt. ... The world today does not understand the need to be alone.""If one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it -- like a secret vice!""Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves: that firm strand which will be the indispensible center of a whole web of human relationships. She must find that inner stillness which Charles Morgan describes as 'the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so that it might be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is still.""The problem is not entirely finding the room of one's own, the time alone, difficult and necessary as that is. The problem is more how to still the soul in the midst of its activities. In fact, the problem is how to feed the soul.""Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions. Instead of stilling the center, the axis of the wheel, we add more centrifugal activities to our lives -- which tend to throw us off balance.""Woman's life today is tending more and more toward the state William James describes so well in the German word, Zerrissenheit -- torn-to-pieces-hood. She will be shattered into a thousand pieces. ... What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive.""Neither woman nor man are likely to be fed by another relationship which seems easier because it is in an earlier stage. Such a love affair cannot really bring back a sense of identity. I believe that true identity is found, as Eckhart once said, by 'going into one's own ground and knowing oneself.' It is found in creative activity springing from within. It is found, paradoxically, when one loses oneself. One must love one's life to find it. Woman can best refind herself by losing herself in some kind of creative activity of her own. ... Only a refound person can refind a personal relationship.""We wish the one-and-only to be permanent, ever-present and continuous. The desire for continuity of being-loved-alone seems to me 'the error bred in the bone' of man. For there is no one-and-only ... there are just one-and-only moments.""One comes in the end to realize that there is no permanent pure-relationship and there should not be. It is not even something to be desired. The pure relationship is limited, in space and in time. In its essence it implies exclusion. It excludes the rest of life, other relationships, other sides of personality, other responsibilities, other possibilities in the future. It excludes growth.""One learns to accept the fact that no permanent return is possible to an old form of relationship; and, more deeply still, that there is no holding of a relationship to a single form. This is not tragedy but part of the ever-recurrent miracle of life and growth. All living relationships are in the process of of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms. But there is no single fixed form to express such a changing relationship.""Marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion and, playing throught these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web communication, a common language, and the acceptance of a lack of language too; a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions, both physical and mental.""I always liked that Virginia Woolf hero who meets middle age admitting: 'Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires ... I am not so gifted as at one time seemed likely. Certain things lie beyond my scope.'""The primitive, physical, functional pattern of the morning of life, the active years before forty or fifty, is outlived. But there is still the afternoon opening up, which one can spend not in the feverish pace of the morning but in having time at last for those intellectual, cultural and spritual activities that were pushed aside in the heat of the race. ... We push the close back and try to prolong the morning, overreaching and straining ourselves in the unnatural effort. We do not succeed, of course. We cannot compete with our sons and daughters. And what a struggle it is to race with these overactive and under-wise adults! In our breathless attempts we often miss the flowering that waits for afternoon.""Many people never climb above the plateau of forty-to-fifty. The signs that presage growth, so similar to those in early adolescence -- discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing -- are interpreted falsly as signs of decay. One is afraid. Naturally. Who is not afraid of pure space - that breath-taking empty space of an open door? But despite fear, one goes through to the room beyond.""Instead of facing these life signs, one runs away; one escaptes -- into depressions, nervous breakdowns, drink, love affairs, or frantic, thoughtless, fruitless work.""We cannot promise that the second half of life promises fair weather and favorable winds. What golden fleece is there for the middle-aged? Is it some kind of new freedom for growth? ... The Scottish philospher MacMurray defined a fully personal relationship as 'a type of relationship into which people enter as persons with the whole of themselves. Personal relationships have no ulterior motive. They are not based on particular interests. The do not serve partial and limited ends. Their value lies entirely in themselves and for the same reason transcends all other values. And that is because they are relations of persons as persons.' Rilke foresaw a great change in the relationships between men and women. He described a state in which there would be space and freedom for growth, and in which each partner would be the means of releasing the other: two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.' Such a stage in life must come not as a gift or lucky accident, but as part of an evolutionary process.""Woman must come of age by herself, to learn how to stand alone. In the past she has swung between two poles of dependence and competition; neither is the center, the true center of being a whole woman. She must find her true center alone. She must follow the advice of the poet to become 'world to oneself for another's sake.'""With growth, it is true, comes differentiation and separation, in the sense that the unity of the tree trunk differentiates as it grows and spreads into limbs, branches and leaves. The two separate worlds or the two solitudes will surely have more to give each other than when each was a meager half. 'A complete sharing between two people is an impossibility,' writes Rilke, 'and whenever it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a mutual agreement which robs either one member or both of his fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that, even between the closest human beings, infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them that makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!' The light shed by any good relationships illuminates all relationships.""An island has a natural balance of physical, intellectual and social life. It has an easy unforced rhythm. Work is not deformed by pressure. Relationship is not strangled by claims. Intimacy is tempered by lightness of touch. We have moved through our day like dancers, not needing to touch more than lightly because we were instinctively moving to the same rhythm. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding.""The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined. It is what Blake was speaking of when he wrote"'He who bends to himself a joyDoth the winged life destroy;But he who kisses the joy as it fliesLives in Eternity's sunrise.'""'The life of the spirit,' said Saint-Exupery, 'the veritable life, is intermittent and only the life of the mind is constant. The spirit alternates between total vision and absolute blindness.'"We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible is in growth, in fluidity. One must accept the security of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency.""How can one learn to live through the ebb tides of one's existence? How can one learn to take the trough of the wave? So beautiful is the still hour of the sea's withdrawal, as beautiful as the sea's return. The sea recedes and returns eternally.""We can have a surfeit of treasures -- an excess of shells, where one or two would be significant.""At home, when I meet my friends in those cubby-holed hours, time is so precious we feel we must cram every available instant with conversation. We cannot afford the luxury of silence. Here I can sit with a friend without talking, sharing the day's last sliver of pale green light on the horizon. Then communication becomes communion and one is nourished as one never is by words.""Out of the welter of life a few people are selected for us by the accident of temporary confinement in the same circle. We never would have chosen these neighbors, but thrown together we stretch to understand each other and are invigorated by the stretching. The difficulty with big city enironment is that we tend to select people like ourselves, a very monotonous diet. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enticing.""When I go back will I be submerged again, not only by distractions, but by too many opportunities? The multiplicity of the world will crowd in on me again with its false sense of values. ... Modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can carry. It's good, I think for our hearts, our minds, our imaginations to be stretched; but body, nerve, endurance and life-span are not as elastic. My life cannot implement in action all the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds."
I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Her writing is soothing, enlightening, and full of wisdom and beauty.Some of my favorite quotes:Woman's life today is tending more and more toward the state William James describes so well in the German word, "Zerrissenheit--torn-to-pieces-hood." She cannot live perpetually in "Zerrissenheit." She will be shattered into a thousand pieces. On the contrary, she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering life proceeding from oneself. It need not be an enormous project or a great work. But it should be something of one's own.""It is fear, I think, that makes one cling nostalgically to the last moment or clutch greedily towards the next. Fear destroys 'the winged life.'...When the heart is flooded with love there is no room in it for fear, for doubt, for hesitation. And it is this lack of fear that makes for the dance. When each partner loves so completely that he has forgotten to ask himself whether or not he is loved in return; when he only knows that he loves and is moving to its music--then, and then only, are two people able to dance perfectly in tune to the same rhythm.""The present is passed over in the race for the future...The here, the now, and the individual, have always been the special concern of the saint, the artist, the poet, and--from time immemorial--the woman. In the small circle of the home she has never quite forgotten the particular uniqueness of each member of the family; the spontaneity of now; the vividness of here. This is the basic substance of life."
What do You think about Gift From The Sea (1991)?
Yea, this book was so touching. She was writing from the wisdom of her years and I long for that kind of ... education. College just teaches you how to write a better paper than you did in high school. A woman like Mrs. Lindbergh teaches you how to live. Take your time with Kindred. Trust me, I KNOW the "more-books-than-I-can-read" dilemma. :) Once you get started, you WON'T be able to put it down. It's sooooo FUN and exciting!!! It's sweet, while being earthy and true but has a great theme. The woman was a GENIUS and she was gone too soon. :( Thanks for this suggestion of this book Robert, and for the awesome comments!!!
—Juanita
This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. In concise, philosophical and thought-provoking language, Anne Morrow Lindbergh provides the reader with wonderful revelations of what it’s like to be a modern woman. As the wife of Charles Lindbergh, she certainly felt the constraints of public engagements and social events, as well as the demands of being a wife and busy mother of five children. Perhaps that is why she was able to provide such a keen insight into the value of solitude and creativity.Often, in our “busy-ness,” we forget about maintaining and growing as individuals. Every man, woman and child needs time alone, every day, in which to nourish his soul. What joy can be found in creative tasks, even if they are as simple as arranging a vase of flowers or baking a batch of cookies. Women, by their very nature, wish to give. Sometimes, we give so much of ourselves that the well runs dry.Anne Morrow Lindbergh used her valuable vacation time on a remote island to replenish herself. There, she embraced the simple pleasures such as watching the ebb and flow of waves on the beach, collecting shells on the shore and strolling on the sand beneath the twinkling stars. She didn’t need curtains to shelter the windows, cooked simply but well, and performed household chores only as necessary. She lived in the present, like a dancer perfectly poised in the here and now. In this special time, she found her center, replenishing the wellspring of who and what she was.Rarely have I read such a wonderful book! Every woman should own a copy for her personal library and if men seek to understand the true nature of women, they should read it as well. I applaud Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s foresight and her rare ability to put into words what I feel deep inside my heart.
—Ann Keller
Okay, my favorite part of this book was the afterwards, wherein Ms. Lindbergh acknowledges just how dated the book's appraisal of feminism was (the book was written in 1955, so you can't blame her for what she didn't know was right around the corner - still, her somewhat negative appraisal bugged me and I was relieved that she acknowledged its problems). She also hints at how difficult it is to follow her type of super-zen advice in real life.I hate to say it, because so many women just L.O.V.E. this book, but it just didn't do much for me. There were definitely some lovely moments here, but much of it was cliched platitudes, and sounded pretty stale and New Age-y to me. It's the kind of stuff that sounds pretty wise, but it's hard to figure out what it really means.To give Ms. Lindbergh, who I have much respect for, the maximum amount of credit, these ideas might be cliches because this book is just that popular. If so, good for her.Maybe I am at the wrong time in my life for this book - it's quite possible. Being a married but childless lawyer, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about "giving too much of myself." This is more a (perfectly legit) concern of mothers and homemakers.There may be some personality issues as well. I'm pretty social. I like hanging out with people. I do enjoy my alone time (which I spend reading, hello), but I'm just not desperate for it like more introverted types often are. This book is definitely very supportive of introverts, but that was a little lost on me. I actually like bustle. I don't like silence and quiet (I mean, that's what ipods were invented for!). I'm tired of preachy introverts suggesting that this means I'm not contemplative!I'm not giving up on this book entirely - I may come back to this - but for now, "Eh."
—Inder
