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“My life passes like a shadow. Yet a little while, and all will be consummated.”
Hope is armor against despair, and as her uncle taught her, patience is a polish that keeps that armor bright. We can’t know the ultimate why of anything, although if we train ourselves to read the intricate fabric that time weaves, we see a pattern certain to console and inspire.
Those are people who see only the surface of the infinite layers of our laminated reality.
It’s human and sane to want peace and to yearn for transcendence in this world of war and insistent nihilism.
most people will still believe what isn’t true, because the truth is heavy to carry compared to the lightness of a lie.
Look with kindness on those who suffer, who struggle against difficulties, who drink unceasingly the bitterness of this life.
“Past, present, and future are one. To know the first two is to know the third.”
The cosmology influenced by modern physics might contend that the past and present and future exist simultaneously and eternally, that all time is unredeemable, leading to only one possible end. However, if that is true, she’s no less obliged to make choices, take risks, stand for what she believes in, endure the consequences. To do otherwise would be to concede the world to those who distill ever more potent evil in the chambers of their hearts.
After all, the river does not race and swell over its banks in anticipation of the storm, and trees don’t char on Monday in consideration of a forest fire on Tuesday. She has no need to panic.
Life is too short to spend any of it justifying herself to people who shape their opinions of others on first impressions and biases.
The world is strange beyond knowing, and life is a journey through wonders, toward mystery.
She will resist death with all her might, but what will be will be. And what will be cannot be allowed to detract from what is, from the beauty of the music or the flavor of the food, because all she has is the moment; all anyone ever has is the moment, and moments, each in succession, are precious.
Although the world is a place of wonders, Vida, what can be seen of it is the least part, and what can’t be seen is the magnificent why and how of the world. Happiness and peace require patient waiting for the sight that at the moment can’t be seen.
Have pity on those who love and are separated, on the lonely, on those who mourn, on those who fear, on all the little animals that live their lives as prey.
At all times, the forest is simultaneously dreamlike and real.
The ruling elite loudly champion diversity but use the powerful tools of technology to shape everyone into like-minded worker bees and mindless consumers, into an obedient oneness.
In this deepest level of sleep, past and future are one with the present, and all of time is accessible.
“Life passes like a shadow. Eighteen years is the same as an hour ago.”
“It’s more pride than principles. If I went yellow on you, my dogs would know.” “Your dogs.” “For a long time, no one’s opinion has mattered half as much as what my dogs think of me. Maybe that sounds crazy to you.” “Sounds dead-solid sane,” she says.
They are Sam’s firmest friends, always ready to welcome and defend, true kin to the dog that was the first of all animals to attend the babe in the manger millennia ago, what every human would be if humans were all humane. Since he was a boy, dogs have taught him how to be a good man, how to give without expecting to receive, how to live with joy in the moment, how to be stoic in suffering.
that although our lives pass like shadows, a continuity of experience shapes the world, and the world in all its glory would not be as magnificent as it is if even one of those lives had not passed through.
They TikTok and tweet and lose themselves in the forests of YouTube. They learn only what Google allows them to know, and year by year the past becomes to them less than it really was. The past was real, I think more real than the present. These days, so many are educated into ignorance, entertained by shallow amusements that drain from them the very substance of themselves, until they seem to have become ghosts long, long before their deaths.
