Richard Bach

Magical Blend Articles "Enlightenment Awards" Richard Bach:

"I think all the major events of our lives are events that we call to ourselves. We forget. There's this wonderful and very important event when we're born, and we forget everything that's gone before, or else we'd be such a mass of rememberings that we couldn't operate successfully on this planet. One thing I really want to do this time-and I have an indefinite number of choices and lifetimes that don't have to be in sequence at all, because they're all going on simultaneously, I believe-is I want to experience this kind of relationship. I want a chance to attack this kind of challenge. I do that not knowing if I'm going to do it right or if I'm going to screw it up. And sometimes when you screw it up, you do it right. Sometimes when you say goodbye, that's the right thing to do in a relationship.

Other times they're very puzzling: How can you have something where you learn so much from each other-and marriage partners, of course, are the first, best teachers of each other-but you reach a point where there's no learning going on? I was startled to reach a point with Leslie where we had nothing to teach each other. The very best each of us had to give was not what the other wanted or needed at that time. And so I realized, it's like when you're in the fifth grade or the eighth grade and you have a teacher that you really love, the time nevertheless comes to move on. You'll never stop holding that person in great regard. And you'll always look back fondly on that. But you've learned what she had to teach you, and now there are other things. To cling to staying in the fifth grade or the eighth grade year after year when there's no learning going on is, to me, not the highest choice."