Eric Liu Quote
Meaning, though, changes with time; text with context. What am I to do? There was a time, as in the minutes after we learned of my father’s death, when those words or words roughly like them, uttered in panic, escaped my mother’s lips. Today, after so many years of lonely meditation, and so many conversations with me that describe but a fraction of those meditations, and so many outings and travels with her Bon Sisters and other friends to explore beyond those meditations, my mother says the words with new meaning. Today she asks the question with what Zen Buddhists call beginner’s mind. A lack of preconception, a reflexive resistance to rutted thinking. A life-sustaining curiosity that takes each moment as a fresh start. What am I to do? has become, for my seventy-seven-year-old mother, What might I do?
Meaning, though, changes with time; text with context. What am I to do? There was a time, as in the minutes after we learned of my father’s death, when those words or words roughly like them, uttered in panic, escaped my mother’s lips. Today, after so many years of lonely meditation, and so many conversations with me that describe but a fraction of those meditations, and so many outings and travels with her Bon Sisters and other friends to explore beyond those meditations, my mother says the words with new meaning. Today she asks the question with what Zen Buddhists call beginner’s mind. A lack of preconception, a reflexive resistance to rutted thinking. A life-sustaining curiosity that takes each moment as a fresh start. What am I to do? has become, for my seventy-seven-year-old mother, What might I do?
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About Eric Liu
President Obama nominated him in January 2015 to serve on the board of directors of the federal Corporation for National and Community Service and he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate; his term expired in December 2017.