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About this quote

What does it mean?
Acknowledging the full cycle of life and the pain of parting with someone loved.
In plain terms
Life includes birth and death, and saying goodbye to love is hard.
What can you take from it?
Accept the full cycle of life and the inevitability of separation.

Where it applies

  • funerals
  • breakups
  • end of life

Putting it to work

  • saying goodbye
  • accepting mortality

Questions to consider

  • How do you cope with saying goodbye?
  • What does accepting death do to how you live?

Another view

It could feel fatalistic to equate living and dying so directly.

More from Leonard Cohen

  1. Here is your cross, Your nails and your hill; And here is your love, That lists where it will

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  2. The light came through the window, Straight from the sun above, And so inside my little room There plunged the rays of Love. In streams of light I clearly saw …

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  3. And here you are hurried, And here you are gone; And here is the love, That it's all built upon.

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