“The Ancestors,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

A few years ago I heard a lecture about the Whitney family, especially about Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, whose patronage established the museum of that name in New York City.  The talk was given by Mrs. Whitney’s granddaughter, and she used a fine phrase when speaking of her family – of their sense of “inherited responsibility” – to do, of course, with received wealth and a sense of using it for public good.  Ah!  Quickly I slipped this phrase from the air and put it into my own pocket!

For it is precisely how I feel, who has inherited not measurable wealth but, as we all do who care for it, that immeasurable fund of thoughts and ideas, from writers and thinkers long gone into the ground – and, inseparable from those wisdoms because demanded by them, the responsibility to live thoughtfully and intelligently.  To enjoy, to question – never to assume, or trample.  Thus the great ones (my great ones, who may not be the same as your great ones) have taught me – to observe with passion, to think with patience, to live always caringly. 

Mary Oliver in Upstream: Selected Essays

Comments are welcome!