How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives

Ann Dillard in The Writing Life:

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one.

In the end, we become the choices we make. Otto Rank defined the artist as one who wants to leave behind a gift. Our gifts say “thank you” to life.

What gift will we leave behind when we leave this world?

2 thoughts on “How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives

  1. The gift I want to leave behind is that of having been an example of “a life well-lived.” That won’t happen because I set out to leave a legacy (gift) but because I was (hopefully, am) sincere and natural in my moment-to-moment decisions/choices which create each good day = a good life as I am living it. I personally find joy in this, and the way I do it has changed — just as I have — over these 75 years of choosing.

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