when you realise you've gone
a few weeks
and haven't felt that awful struggle
of your childish self—struggling
to lift itself out of its
inadequacy and incompetence—
you'll know you've gone
some weeks
without meeting new challenge, and
without growing, and
that you've gone
some weeks
towards losing touch with yourself.
The only calibration that counts
is how much heart people invest,
how much they ignore their fears
of being hurt or caught out or humiliated.
And the only thing people regret
is that they didn't live boldly enough,
that they didn't invest enough heart,
didn't love enough.
Nothing else really counts at all.
It was a saying about noble figures
in old Irish poems
—he would give his hawk
to any man that asked for it,
yet he loved his hawk better
than men nowadays
love their bride of tomorrow.
He would mourn a dog
with more grief than men nowadays
mourn their fathers.
-- Ted Hughes
(letter to his son, Nicholas, 1986)
(contained in Letters of Ted Hughes)
(arranged quote)
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