Wise Omissions

Life is a selection, no more. The work of the gardener is simply to destroy this weed, or that shrub, or that tree, & leave this other to grow. The library is gradually made inestimable by taking out from the superabounding mass of books all but the best. The palace is a selection of materials; its architecture, a selection of the best effects. Things collect very fast of themselves; the difference between house & house is the wise omissions.

Emerson in his journals, 1846 (Quoted in Crase, AMERIFIL.TXT)

You must recognize that this kind of wisdom is rare--rarer still in the age of impulsive instantaneity.

"Life is selection..." the differences among lives (lived in like circumstances) are the results of these selections. It seems though that WHAT we are driven to "select" is insignificant, irrelevent. The contents of our lives are pre-selected, manufactured, managed.

You, I fear, are not the Gardener, but the shrub in the landscape, the weed by the wall.