Re: notes / comments
Friday, December 22, 2006
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PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
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We like to say that Germans are more civilized than Turks because they admitted and apologized for the Holocaust. We forget that, unlike Turks, Germans lost. Had they won, there would have been neither admission nor apology.
*
Even when you do the right thing you may be penalized because of someone else’s blunders, as when you are hit by a drunk driver or massacred in time of war.
*
I don’t mind testifying against myself. Some may call this low self-esteem. But what if the alternative is to sound like a self-satisfied pompous ass?
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The past is as incomprehensible as the future is unpredictable if only because once upon a time the past was also the future, and whenever in our narrative we make the past predictable, we ignore the fact that at any moment in real life things can go wrong in a million directions.
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When I think of all the wrong turns I could have taken, I feel as though I were the luckiest man on earth simply because I am alive.
*
Whatever wisdom I have acquired I owe to my enemies. Ever since I have gained that realization I have been wondering why is it that we Armenians collectively have become one of the dumbest nations on earth instead of one of the wisest.
*
Mistakes make us humble, unless they are of such colossal magnitude that admitting them would mean committing political suicide.
#
Friday, December 22, 2006
********************************************
PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
******************************************
We like to say that Germans are more civilized than Turks because they admitted and apologized for the Holocaust. We forget that, unlike Turks, Germans lost. Had they won, there would have been neither admission nor apology.
*
Even when you do the right thing you may be penalized because of someone else’s blunders, as when you are hit by a drunk driver or massacred in time of war.
*
I don’t mind testifying against myself. Some may call this low self-esteem. But what if the alternative is to sound like a self-satisfied pompous ass?
*
The past is as incomprehensible as the future is unpredictable if only because once upon a time the past was also the future, and whenever in our narrative we make the past predictable, we ignore the fact that at any moment in real life things can go wrong in a million directions.
*
When I think of all the wrong turns I could have taken, I feel as though I were the luckiest man on earth simply because I am alive.
*
Whatever wisdom I have acquired I owe to my enemies. Ever since I have gained that realization I have been wondering why is it that we Armenians collectively have become one of the dumbest nations on earth instead of one of the wisest.
*
Mistakes make us humble, unless they are of such colossal magnitude that admitting them would mean committing political suicide.
#
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