"Treasure each other in the recognition that we do not know how long we shall have each other"
About this Quote
Liebman’s line is a gentle ultimatum disguised as a blessing: love each other harder because time is not negotiable. The verb choice matters. “Treasure” isn’t “appreciate” or “be nice”; it’s an economic metaphor that turns attention into currency and other people into the rarest asset you’ll ever hold. That framing quietly indicts the way we behave when we assume permanence: we ration tenderness, postpone apologies, treat closeness like a subscription that auto-renews.
The engine of the sentence is its double “each other,” a mutuality that refuses the comforting fantasy that one-sided devotion is enough. It’s not just “value the people you love,” but “build a reciprocal practice of care while you still can.” The phrase “in the recognition” is the subtextual tell: he’s not selling sentiment, he’s prescribing a mental discipline. Recognition isn’t a mood; it’s an awareness you carry into daily choices, especially the small ones that decide whether relationships deepen or calcify.
Contextually, Liebman wrote from within a 20th-century American moral tradition shaped by pastoral counseling and the aftershocks of large-scale loss. Even without naming grief, the quote is calibrated for it. It offers a secular prayer for the ordinary day: let mortality do what it does best, which is clarify priorities. Not in a melodramatic way, but in a practical one. The line’s quiet power is that it doesn’t threaten death; it recruits uncertainty as a reason to be generous now, while “each other” is still available.
The engine of the sentence is its double “each other,” a mutuality that refuses the comforting fantasy that one-sided devotion is enough. It’s not just “value the people you love,” but “build a reciprocal practice of care while you still can.” The phrase “in the recognition” is the subtextual tell: he’s not selling sentiment, he’s prescribing a mental discipline. Recognition isn’t a mood; it’s an awareness you carry into daily choices, especially the small ones that decide whether relationships deepen or calcify.
Contextually, Liebman wrote from within a 20th-century American moral tradition shaped by pastoral counseling and the aftershocks of large-scale loss. Even without naming grief, the quote is calibrated for it. It offers a secular prayer for the ordinary day: let mortality do what it does best, which is clarify priorities. Not in a melodramatic way, but in a practical one. The line’s quiet power is that it doesn’t threaten death; it recruits uncertainty as a reason to be generous now, while “each other” is still available.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
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