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Awareness Quote by Annie Dillard

“Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or from drowning: in medias res , surrounded by familiar people and objects…” quote by Annie Dillard
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““Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or from drowning: in medias res , surrounded by familiar people and objects, equipped with a hundred skills. They know the neighborhood, they can read and write English, they are old hands at the commonplace mysteries, and yet they feel themselves to have just stepped off the boat, just converged with their bodies, just flown down from a trance, to lodge in an eerily familiar life already well under way. I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again. I woke at intervals until, by that September when Father went down the river, the intervals of waking tipped the scales, and I was more often awake than not. I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again.””

Annie Dillard

About This Quote

Source Essay: “The Living” from *Teaching a Stone to Talk*, 1995

Awareness emerges slowly, like waking from a dream, revealing a familiar world that feels new.

In simple terms: Understanding comes in stages.

Key Takeaway

Embrace continual self‑discovery.

Themes

growth awakening identity existence

Mood

thoughtful introspective

Type

literary philosophical

When to use this quote

  • education
  • personal development
  • life transitions
  • spiritual practice

Key Concepts

self‑realization existential awareness

Questions to Reflect On

  • What “waking” moments have reshaped you?
  • How do you integrate new insights with past identity?
A Different Perspective

The metaphor may over‑dramatize normal growth.

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