"I learned to be with myself rather than avoiding myself with limiting habits; I started to be aware of my feelings more, rather than numb them"
About this Quote
Self-avoidance is the quiet engine of most habits, and Judith Wright names it with the plainspoken precision of someone who has watched the mind try to slip out the back door. The line turns on a contrast that feels almost moral: being with myself versus avoiding myself. Wright frames habit not as quirky routine but as a narrowing technology, a set of “limiting” moves that shrink one’s inner range. The verb choices matter. “Learned” implies discipline, not epiphany; “started” signals a practice still in motion, a life rebuilt through repetition rather than revelation.
The subtext is a critique of the culturally rewarded forms of numbness: busyness, stoicism, productivity-as-virtue, the socially acceptable addictions that let you keep functioning while staying estranged from your own emotional weather. Wright’s phrasing refuses melodrama. She doesn’t claim to conquer pain; she claims to notice it. That’s the pivot from self-management to self-acquaintance, from controlling feelings to allowing them enough space to speak.
Context sharpens the stakes. Wright, a major Australian poet, spent her life writing about land, ethics, and belonging with an unsparing clarity; she knew what it meant to confront complicity and loss without anesthetic. Read through that lens, “being with myself” isn’t self-care branding. It’s an ecological stance turned inward: attention as responsibility. Awareness becomes a form of integrity, a refusal to outsource the cost of living to a fog of habits.
The subtext is a critique of the culturally rewarded forms of numbness: busyness, stoicism, productivity-as-virtue, the socially acceptable addictions that let you keep functioning while staying estranged from your own emotional weather. Wright’s phrasing refuses melodrama. She doesn’t claim to conquer pain; she claims to notice it. That’s the pivot from self-management to self-acquaintance, from controlling feelings to allowing them enough space to speak.
Context sharpens the stakes. Wright, a major Australian poet, spent her life writing about land, ethics, and belonging with an unsparing clarity; she knew what it meant to confront complicity and loss without anesthetic. Read through that lens, “being with myself” isn’t self-care branding. It’s an ecological stance turned inward: attention as responsibility. Awareness becomes a form of integrity, a refusal to outsource the cost of living to a fog of habits.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Improvement |
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