Love for the Good at Hand
Nov. 30th, 2008 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susanstinsonI quoted this yesterday in an email to a friend, and keep thinking about it.
Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous. Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows. One cannot love the future or anything in it, for nothing is known there. And one cannot unselfishly make a future for someone else. Love for the future is self-love--love for the present self, projected and magnified into the future, and it is an irremediable loneliness.
Wendell Berry, from Standing By Words
Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous. Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows. One cannot love the future or anything in it, for nothing is known there. And one cannot unselfishly make a future for someone else. Love for the future is self-love--love for the present self, projected and magnified into the future, and it is an irremediable loneliness.
Wendell Berry, from Standing By Words