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Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life. 'Experience! More experience!' I clamored. In a frantic effort to arrive at some kind of order, some tentative working program, I would sit down quietly now and then and spend long, long hours mapping out a plan of procedure. Plans, such as architects and engineers sweat over, were never my forte. But I could always visualize my dreams in a cosmogonic pattern. Though I could never formulate a plot I could balance and weigh opposing forces, characters, situations, events, distribute them in a sort of heavenly lay-out, always with plenty of space between, always with the certitude that there is no end, only worlds within worlds ad infinitum, and that wherever one left off one had created a world, a world finite, total, complete.

Henry Miller#19

LifeDreamsPlanningReality

About this quote

What does it mean?
Miller reflects on his pursuit of order and plans, realizing that life often defies structure. He finds comfort in the endless nature of worlds and experiences.
In plain terms
Plans rarely work perfectly but dreams can be endless.
What can you take from it?
Accept that life is complex and unstructured.

Where it applies

  • career planning
  • creative work
  • life reflection

Putting it to work

  • Create flexible plans
  • Embrace uncertainty

Questions to consider

  • Do your plans work?
  • How do you handle uncertainty?

Another view

Some structure is necessary for success.

More from Henry Miller

  1. A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in…

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  2. No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our…

    Permalink to quote #20
  3. We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existen…

    Permalink to quote #17

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