Yesterday I spent the afternoon sorting through boxes of archived files, –class notes from college and grad school, articles on business that I had saved for a second reading that never happened, and family related materials. It was an archeological dig into the past of selves that became the person that I now am. I felt waves of emotion.

Here are some old quotations that are worth considering again at the age of 69.

If one could measure change in American society up to 1900, it would come to three inches: basically an agricultural society. From 1900 to 1950, it would be 3 feet. From 1950 to now, it would be as high as the Washington monument.
–unattributed

The end is not an ungrounded presupposition. It is an ungrounded way of acting.
—Wittgenstein, from On Certainty

The language game is to say something unpredictable. It is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable or unreasonable. It is there—like our life.
—Wittgenstein, from On Certainty

Without constant reference to sensation by which mental expectations are affirmed or denied such a complete identification of images with things occurs that all criticism of the former is rendered impossible and all response to the latter is channeled into customary ways.
—Michael Polanyi from Personal Knowledge

There are two kinds of people…..those who are really alive and those who are merely living. Those merely living are usually well-fed, well-liked, well-bred, and well-meaning. The painless and the pleasurable is their style of life, and much of the time we enjoy being around them. They make no demands on us. Their conversation is never disturbing. The graciousness of their lives is supportive and affirming. More often than not we covet the relaxed existence they lead. But in reflective moments we know that they are straw people who fear change and reject the future, for who mediocrity is an accomplishment and blandness a rainbow. To their existence there is no excitement, only thrills, there is no action, only motion, there is no intensity, only duration. They are safe because they are not alive to anything innovative, daring or exploratory.

Do something!
—Jim Boyd

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
Cause the truth you might be running from is so small
But it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day
So I’m sailing for tomorrow, my dreams are a dying
and my love is an anchor tied to you, tied with a silver chain
I have my ship and all her flags are flyin
She is all that I have and music is her name
Think about how many times I have fallen
Spirits are using me, larger voices callin’
what heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten
I have been around the world
Lookin’ for that woman girl
who knows love can endure
And you know it will. And you know it will.

–Stills, R. Curtis, M. Curtis