22 Quotes by Jedidiah Jenkins

Knowledge alone is like an unearned memory, mostly forgotten.

I didn’t know what I was holding on to. I had wrapped my life in the fear of messing up. Of disappointing God, which really meant disappointing my mom and friends. I was finding that so much of my life had been about avoiding the feeling of being in trouble.

This was life? Quitting the fight and accepting yourself, flaws and all? I don’t want to accept my flaws.

What if my friends went on without me? What if my absence revealed that I was never really necessary? What if no one notices I’m gone?

Saying everything you think or do in public isn’t appropriate at a dinner party or online.

For the first time in my life, I felt that my only allegiance was to the truth. Not to tradition. Not to safety. Not to what I had been taught. But to whatever was true. And that made me feel strong.

She seemed to love him without needing him.

I love old drawings and the sketches of cities and animals from ancient field guides. I like timeless things, old things. They’ve made it to the modern age and taken on a meaning larger than their intention. I wanted my journal to be like that. There is a weird paradox in trying to live a meaningful life, one you will talk about and tell about. There is the present experience of the living, but also the separate eye, watching from above, already seeing the living from the outside.

Exposure to human stories reminds us that we’re all human. I mean real exposure. Listening, hearing. Not point from across the room. Engaging. And most of us are just trying to make it day by day without hurting anyone else.