If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, … - Robin Wall Kimmerer

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Engraved portrait of Robin Wall Kimmerer, facing left

If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, not on going somewhere, but on being where you are. So I stretch out, close my eyes, and listen to the rain.

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About Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer (born September 13, 1953) is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation who is the Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology; and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF). She is the author of numerous scientific articles, and the books Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (2003), and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (2013).

Biography information from Wikiquote · Portrait adapted from Wikimedia Commons, Indiana Humanities (CC BY-SA)

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Robin W. Kimmerer Robin Wall

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If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, not on going somewhere, but on being where you are.

Additional quotes by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Swimming was banned in 1940. Beautiful Onondaga Lake. People spoke of it with pride. Now they barely speak of it at all, as if it were a family member whose demise was so shameful that the name never comes up.

You can’t listen to the Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy. And, while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea. In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness. The Thanksgiving Address reminds you that you already have everything you need. Gratitude doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of the whole economy. That’s good medicine for land and people alike.

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