"The point is to change one's life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now"
About this Quote
Deming draws a hard line between catharsis and transformation, and she does it with the brisk moral impatience of someone who has watched “express yourself” become a substitute for actually changing anything. The repetition of “The point is” works like a gavel: no digressions, no romance about suffering, no permission to confuse feeling with progress. In three short beats she demotes emotional venting from liberation to leakage - a temporary release that can still leave the same internal regime in power.
The subtext is quietly confrontational. She’s speaking to a culture (and a political moment) where rage can feel like proof of righteousness, where confession can masquerade as repair. Deming doesn’t deny the reality of destructive emotions; she names them as forces that “have been destroying one,” granting them a history and a cost. But she refuses the idea that simply airing them is victory. The real target is the seductive belief that intensity equals agency.
“Master them” is the risky word: it can sound like repression if you read it with today’s suspicion of self-control. In Deming’s context - a writer shaped by nonviolent activism and the disciplined ethics of resistance - mastery is less about shutting down feeling than about refusing to be driven by it. The sentence pivots from discharge to direction: “so to act” suggests practice, strategy, habit. It’s an argument that the self, like a movement, is changed by what it repeatedly does, not what it merely expresses. Emotions are acknowledged as fuel; Deming insists they still need a driver.
The subtext is quietly confrontational. She’s speaking to a culture (and a political moment) where rage can feel like proof of righteousness, where confession can masquerade as repair. Deming doesn’t deny the reality of destructive emotions; she names them as forces that “have been destroying one,” granting them a history and a cost. But she refuses the idea that simply airing them is victory. The real target is the seductive belief that intensity equals agency.
“Master them” is the risky word: it can sound like repression if you read it with today’s suspicion of self-control. In Deming’s context - a writer shaped by nonviolent activism and the disciplined ethics of resistance - mastery is less about shutting down feeling than about refusing to be driven by it. The sentence pivots from discharge to direction: “so to act” suggests practice, strategy, habit. It’s an argument that the self, like a movement, is changed by what it repeatedly does, not what it merely expresses. Emotions are acknowledged as fuel; Deming insists they still need a driver.
Quote Details
| Topic | Embrace Change |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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