You should fly like a bird towards your mountain.

Author: Tara Westover

Summary

"Educated"
A debut novel that topped the New York Times bestseller list in its first week on the market and has remained in the top spot for 80 weeks. It has sold over a million copies in the United States and the author has been named one of Time magazine's "Most Influential People". How did a girl who never went to school before the age of 17 become a Cambridge University PhD? How much betrayal of the past is needed to find one's true self!

This book, like "The Song of a Countryman", tells the story of that mountain, that person, and the transformation from an incomplete family to the author's ultimate self-realization. Although the road was difficult and enviable to others, as ordinary and ordinary people, how do we slowly lose our determination to realize our own value under the impact of reality?

When we were young, that mountain blocked our way, and we always wanted to climb over the mountain to see the other side of the world. When we grew up and could climb over the mountain, we found that the mountain was still a mountain, but the person was no longer the same. You should fly like a bird towards your mountain. Tara left her father to find her own mountain, leaving behind the mountain that had been pressing on her.

I still like this kind of content about inner monologue. By using other people's eyes to see the world, you can gain a different life. Just like the book "I Deliver Express in Beijing", most of it is about the author's view of the world from his own perspective, and the author's inner thoughts are vividly expressed, which is very satisfying to read.

From a small family to a whole country, the power of the group sometimes overwhelms the individual. So when the group is wrong, how do you correct that mistake? Perhaps only time can prove it.

Preface#

The snow that falls in winter always melts in spring.

Choosing Goodness#

The relationship between my father and his mother is like two cats with their tails tied together. They can talk for a week, but they can't agree on anything. But what keeps them closely connected is their love for the mountain.

Cream-colored Shoes#

Life on the mountain gives people a sense of supreme supremacy, a sense of being independent from the world, and even a sense of domination.

Honest Dirt#

In our family, learning is completely self-guided: as long as you finish your own work, you can learn whatever you want.

Shields Big and Small#

She said to me, "If you can bring them hope and make them believe that they are improving, they will believe anything and eat anything. But there is no magic in the world. Nutrition, exercise, and studying the properties of herbs, that's all."
The skill I am learning is crucial, which is to patiently read things I don't understand.

Little Prostitute#

Time flies fast. The more you fear something, the faster time passes.

Intuition#

Throughout my life, these intuitions have always taught me one thing: relying on myself increases the chances of success.

Silent Church#

What is truly valuable is not me, but the surface constraints and rituals that make me lose my identity.
Tyler stood up to leave. "There is a world outside, Tara," he said, "Once your father stops instilling his views in your ears, the world will look very different."

Blood and Feathers#

I don't understand why I was not allowed to receive a good education when I was a child.

Back to the Beginning#

After spending a month in the junkyard, Brigham Young University seemed like a dream, something I had imagined. Now, the dream is over.
At that time, I believed - a part of me will always believe - that my father's words should also be my own views.

Chanting of the Ancestors#

Every time he said, "Hey, nigger, lift the boom," or "Get me a level, nigger," I felt like I was back in college, back in that auditorium - the place where I caught a glimpse of human history and pondered my place in it.
That summer, I saw their faces appear on every rafter that Sean welded. So in the end, I finally understood an obvious fact: some people oppose the tide of equality; some people must take freedom from certain people.
I have realized how we are shaped by the traditions given to us by others, traditions that we consciously or unconsciously ignore. I began to understand that we speak for a discourse, a discourse whose sole purpose is to lose humanity and treat others cruelly - because cultivating this discourse is easier, because holding power always makes people feel like they are moving forward.
I have been called a nigger a thousand times. I used to laugh, but now I can't laugh anymore. The word hasn't changed, and the way Sean says it hasn't changed, but my ears have. They no longer hear the jokes in it. What they hear is a signal, a call that transcends time, and the response is a growing conviction: I will no longer allow myself to be at the forefront of a conflict that I do not understand.

Our Whispers, Our Screams#

His happiness comes from humiliating me. Humiliating me is not accidental or incidental. It is his purpose.
Believing in living in one's own thoughts, not in the thoughts of others. I often wonder if the most powerful words I wrote that night were not born out of anger, but out of doubt: I don't know. I just don't know.
I have never allowed myself the privilege of uncertainty, but I refuse to give way to those who claim to be certain. My whole life has been lived in the narratives of others. Their voices are strong, domineering, and absolute. It was only then that I realized that my voice could be as powerful as theirs.

I Come from Idaho#

I have been taught all my life that marriage is God's will and refusing marriage is a sin. I am defying God, but I don't want to. I want children and my own family, but even if I long for all of this, I know I can never have it. I don't have the ability. I despise myself as long as I get close to the opposite sex.

Lost Knight#

We have always lived in a state of vigilance and constant fear, with our brains filled with cortisol because we know that those things can happen at any time. Because Dad always puts his beliefs before safety. Because he believes he is right, even after experiencing the first car accident, the second car accident, the dumpster injury, the fire, and the tray falling. We are the ones who pay the price.

Flower Seller#

**I was prepared for insults, but I was not prepared to accept this answer. **
"Don't think that way," Dr. Kerry raised his voice, "You are not Fool's Gold, shining only under certain light. No matter who you become, no matter what you transform yourself into, you are still inherently you. It has always been inside you. Not in Cambridge, but in yourself. You are gold. Going back to Brigham Young University, or even going back to the mountain in your hometown, will not change who you are. It may change how others see you, and it may even change how you see yourself - even gold can appear dull in certain light - but that's an illusion. Gold is always gold."
I can go to school, I can buy new clothes, but I will always be Tara Westover. None of the jobs I have done would be done by a Cambridge student. No matter how I dress, we are always different.
She is just a Londoner in nice clothes. Until she believes in herself. Then, it doesn't matter what clothes she wears.

Graduation#

In the past, I always believed everything, without any doubt, it was amazing. I wrote that the whole world was wrong; only Dad was right.
I remembered what Taylor's wife, Stephanie, said to me on the phone a few days ago. She said it took her years to convince Taylor to allow her to vaccinate the children because he still believed that vaccines were a conspiracy of the medical establishment.
If I hadn't just remembered, I had never been vaccinated myself until today, maybe I would have more confidence in mocking Taylor.

The Hand of the Almighty#

I finally understood something that I had not understood before, even though I had rejected my father's world, I had never found the courage to live in this world.
But when I read a sentence written by John Stuart Mill, I was moved: "This is a subject with no ultimate answer." The subject Mill was thinking about was the nature of women. He claimed that for many centuries, women have been deceived, persuaded, pushed, and squeezed into a series of distorted concepts, making it impossible to define women's talents and ambitions.
When the mountain appeared in front of me, it was almost midnight. Under the pitch-black night sky, I could only vaguely recognize her majestic figure.

Farce After Tragedy#

Her daughter brought me a painting to look at, and I bit my lip, staring at this girl, wondering what she could learn from an uneducated mother.
Somehow, I never realized that my sister may have experienced everything I experienced before me.
You are my child, and I should have protected you well.
When I told them all this, I felt no shame at all. That was when I realized the source of shame: not because I didn't study in a marble music school, not because I didn't have a diplomat father; not because my father was half crazy, not because my mother followed him. My shame comes from having a pair of scissors that pushed me towards a creaking sound, rather than a father who took me away from them; my shame comes from those moments when I lie on the ground, knowing that my mother is in the next room with her eyes closed, without choosing to fulfill a mother's responsibility.
I think I can finally face my past life calmly.

The Sorcery of Physics#

I prefer the family I choose rather than the family I am given, so the happier I am in Cambridge, the more I feel like I am betraying Buck Peak and emitting a stench. This feeling has become a part of my body, something I can taste on my tongue and smell in my breath.

The Essence of Things#

Mother never confronted Father, and Father never confronted Sean. Father never promised to help me and Audrey. Mother lied.

West of the Sun#

When I lost my sister, I lost my whole family
That doesn't mean I completely believe my own memories, but I believe them as much as I believe other people's memories, and even more than I believe some people's memories.

Two Waving Arms#

When life itself is so absurd, who knows what can be considered crazy?
I convinced myself that what I planned to do was admirable, and in order to win my parents' love, I was willing to give up my own views on right and wrong, reality, and reason. For them, I believed that even if all I saw were windmills, I would be willing to put on armor and charge at giants.
Blessing is a kind of kindness. The conditions he offered me were the same as those he offered my sister. I can imagine that when she realized that she could exchange her reality and his reality with me, it must have been a relief. She must be very grateful for paying so little. I can't blame her for her choice, but at that moment, I knew I wouldn't make that choice. All my struggles, my years of study, have been to give myself the privilege of witnessing and experiencing more truths beyond what my father has given me, and to use these truths to construct my own thoughts.

The Gamble of Redemption#

The problem with mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is, you will take it for granted.
If the first fall is God's will, then whose will is the second fall?
A mystery that I can never understand its rules, because those are not rules, but a kind of intention to trap me. I can stay and look for the former home; I can also leave now, before the walls move and the exit closes.

Family#

When a person's responsibility to the family conflicts with his responsibility to friends, to society, and to himself, what should he do?

Education#

Now I can only remember the past, we are separated by thousands of mountains and rivers, time will not come back.
I am no longer the child raised by my father, but he is still the father who raised me.
You can call this self in many ways: transformation, metamorphosis, hypocrisy, betrayal. I call it: education.