Picture: Anup Shah and Fiona Rogers / Rex Features (via 97 per cent human: photographs of primates by Anup Shah and Fiona Rogers - Telegraph)
be mine?
"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (via bookmania)
…And with your spirit
I wish I could remember, really remember, what it felt like to hold Steve’s hand. To have him look me in the eyes and see me and just let me see him. Not to remember, not to recall, but to relive. To feel the soft pressure, the assurance, the curiousity. I wish my memory were perfect. But silence is a better medium for feelings that words never quite get right.
I wish I could remember the feeling of Colin’s arms encircling me. The sound of his laugh. The playfulness in his eyes. I wish I could remember everything with perfect clarity.
I hope I always remember what it felt like to have Nanalee pause before me as she followed her husband’s casket out of the church and to look through my eyes, through me, to my soul, to hug me like no one has ever hugged me. With all she has.
I hope I never forget the feeling of Chris sinking into my arms, the feeling of seeing tears well up in his eyes. I hope I remember the bitterness of running my fingers through his hair and kissing his cheek and never, ever wanting to let go. Of being touched by a soul.
I hope that the kindness the Wanha family showed me by allowing me to be with them stays with my heart for ever.
Because few moments have changed me more. Oh, what blissful agony.
It’s so strange to be sad. It really is. Because we hate it, we despise it. We look for ways to circumvent it, to ignore it, to pretend we aren’t alone.
Yet, at the same time, we revel in sadness. There’s something alluring about it. Something so enticing about pitying ourselves. We want to be happy, but it’s so much easier to be sad.
We curse life and say how unfair it is and how little sense it makes, especially when those we love are taken from us too soon.
But what I’ve realized is that there is so much happiness in the sadness. We get to feel! How incredible is that? We get to love and to feel agony and despair and the absolute devastation of separation from someone who makes our lives better. Yeah, we don’t have to. We get to. Why would happiness matter if life weren’t sad?
Who says that life should be easy? Even now I’m crying because it is so deeply painful to see others suffer, to feel suffering myself. But why shouldn’t I suffer?
Life would be so much less wonderful without pain.
There’s a scene in Le Petit Prince where he meets a fox and the fox tells him that he wants a friend, which is just what the little prince is looking for, so le renard tells him that they must “apprivoiser” one another, which means “to tame” one another. He tells the little prince that if they do this, then they will be friends, but “nous aurons besoin l’un de l’autre” (they will need one another). And that’s a big risk to take. The little prince asks how they will do this and le renard says, “Je te regarderai du coin de l’oeil et tu ne diras rien. Le langage est source de malentendus. Mais, chaque jour, tu pourras t’asseoir un peu plus près…” (I’ll look at you out of the corner of my eye and you won’t say anything. Language is a source of misunderstanding. But, every day, you can come a little closer…).
So the day comes when they must say goodbye, and le renard says to the little prince that he is going to cry, and the prince says to him that it’s his fault because he wanted them to become friends. Le renard tells him yes, of course. To which the prince says, but now you’re going to cry, so you gain nothing from this!
Le renard’s response is one of my favorite pieces of literature:
“J’y gagne, dit le renard, à cause de la couleur du blé…Adieu, dit le renard. Voici mon secret…on ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux…C’est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante.”
I gain, said the fox, because of the color of wheat (which is the little prince’s hair color)…goodbye, said the fox. Here is my secret…you cannot see well except with your heart. The essential is invisible through your eyes…It’s the time you have lost for your rose which makes her so special.
It’s very sad that those we love must one day leave us. Many would say it’s the most difficult part of life. But what a wonderful life! I have the chance to allow people to change me, even if I’m only given the gift of one hour of their life.
I gained an hour, or three years, or fifty with them. In my opinion, sadness for death can only ever be half-hearted once we realize we were given the gift of their life at all. But what utter agony it truly is to lose a friend.
"Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science."
- William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads preface (via bookoasis)
incredible
(via theartsyscientist)
“Too many people grow up. That’s the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don’t remember what it’s like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well I won’t do that.”
- Walt Disney
(via theartsyscientist)
"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (via bookoasis)
"I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen."
- John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent (via bookoasis)
Ugh.
People are ridiculous. Seriously, humanity is ridiculous. Futile and arrogant. When are we ever going to learn?
