Travelling with my mother in Quebec, we saw the statue of Champlain that stands outside the Chateau Frontenac. “People dressed so strangely in those days,” she said. I let her continue the thought. “A lot of times they had people dress them – can you imagine? Needing someone to dress you?”
She continued: “You know, when I was a kid, I felt sorry for rich people. As a kid all I really saw of them was when they walked from their cars to their apartment buildings. And I felt they must be sick, something had to be wrong with them: they were so weak they needed people to open the doors for them.”
This is actually a profound insight, one so profound only a child could have it. And I can see how much of my life has been built around this one insight into life which my mother had as a child and passed on to me as a kind of unconscious inheritance. Don’t have someone do your living for you.
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