Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar

It was excruciating, now, for Cyrus to think of himself as the unwitting subject of the same predictable psychic tempests as every other human on the planet.

But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That’s the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing. That belief corrupts everything, has everyone with any power sitting on their hands.

I had words—enough to say “please” and “sorry” and “thank you”—all you need in any language, really, unless you’re a philosopher.