Euphoria

by Lily King

Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination. —Ruth Benedict

At night you cried, because everyone around you was crying, halls and halls of boys crying in the dark for their brothers. ‘Tears are not endless and we have no more.’ That is the line I like best of all those war poets.

We’re always, in everything we do in this world, she said, limited by subjectivity. But our perspective can have an enormous wingspan, if we give it the freedom to unfurl.

Perhaps all science is merely self-investigation.

It was the opposite of wanting to die. But it was scarcely more bearable.

I want too much. I always have.

Why are we, with all our ‘progress,’ so limited in understanding & sympathy & the ability to give each other real freedom?

Always in her mind there had been the belief that somewhere on earth there was a better way to live, and that she would find it.