Articles and Features
Egocentricism
Week of December 28, 1997
I should be writing a section on the New Year in the Western world, but I just
can't get myself to do it. January first doesn't mark the year's beginning in
all parts of this world and I can't talk about new beginnings when I'm aware that
it doesn't mean that to everyone. Of course, I talk about Halloween and Christmas
as if everyone knew what these holidays meant. I talk about the flu in the cold
of winter when it's summer in Argentina. How do I look past myself and my little
world to see the big picture? How do I put aside my large biases on this small
planet?
Maybe I shouldn't. What does a writer do, but to describe the world around her
as best as she can? If I worry about the New Year in Hong Kong when I'm trying
to write about the New Year in the United States, am I able to fully tell the
story of the resolutions and promises of a Utahan? If Jane Austen had taken a
page or two to describe the life of the servants of Emma, would the story have
been as vivid? I'm not proposing that egocentricism is correct. Other cultures
are just as important as the one in which I am immersed, but I am fully unable to
comment on them. I can only report life around me, and my yearly resolution is
to do just that.
Introduction and quote compilation by Laura S. Moncur, Staff Writer.
- "Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the
public and have no self."
- Cyril Connolly
- "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends
on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw
- "The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never
worshipped anything but himself."
- Sir Richard F. Burton
- "Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself."
- Jane Wagner
- "I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the
ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."
- Frederick Douglass
- "Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you
see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can
rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever."
- Nancy Kerrigan
- Truth is truth, no matter who says it.
- "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what
am I? And if not now, when?"
- Rabbi Hillel, 12th Century
For more information about Self Improvement, try these links:
-
Self Improvement Online - This site provides a weekly collection of inspirational
quotes and a list of links to inspirational quote pages. There is also information on
any sort of therapy available (bogus and not so bogus), from Aromatherapy to Yoga.
- The following books and tapes are available through Amazon.com:
-
Forever, Erma : Best-Loved Writing from America's Favorite Humorist
Paperback by Erma Bombeck - Writings from a woman who was never scared to talk
about the intricacies of American life.
-
Life 101 Hardcover by Peter McWilliams - Reading one of his books is tantamount
to reading them all, but this is the one I recommend. A wonderfully positive
book with lots of quotations to make you feel good about what he's saying.
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