Feb 2, 2022
This world of escapists I had lived among, this crowd of reformers, artists, writers, labor leaders, philosophers, and scientists, they had been terribly busy all the time 'doing the job' as they were wont to call it, the job, in fact, of avoiding the responsibility of themselves, and of getting onto themselves, and their activities had not left them time or leisure to be : for merely being. They reasoned and they rationalized, they fed themselves and they made love, they wrote, painted, telephoned, and talked at a furious rate—but they never radiated. They had not the time to be: to be anything much, and never the time to be kind, kind, as I was learning now, a man could be.
—Mabel Dodge Luhan, from Edge of Taos Desert