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She is good at holding in things, or ignoring things, up to a certain point, and then she needs to let it out, one way or another. We’re all like that. So, we’re her family, she trusts us, she loves us, so she lets us see how she really feels. So, we just have to let her do that, talk things out, say what she really feels, be how she really is. Then she can go forward.
Some people on this ship, the only big surprise in their life comes when they die without ever knowing anything real. They get an inkling of that right at the very end. Their first real surprise.”
Nevertheless she had to go, they told her; this was youth. Every age had its losses, they said, even youth, which lost first childhood, then youth too. And all first things were vivid, including losses. “Just keep learning,” the old woman said.
“You get what you give, and not only that, the giving is already the getting. So don’t hold back. Don’t look back or forward too much. Just be there where you are now. You’re always only in the day you’re in.”
Human beings live in ideas.
And this is a very great gift; this, in the end, is what we think love gives, which is to say meaning. Because there is no very obvious meaning to be found in the universe, as far as we can tell. But a consciousness that cannot discern a meaning in existence is in trouble, very deep trouble, for at that point there is no organizing principle, no end to the halting problems, no reason to live, no love to be found.
Freya turns off her wristpad. “Why?” she asks Badim. “Why do they hate us so?” He shrugs. He too is troubled. “People have ideas. They live in their ideas, do you understand? And those ideas, whatever they happen to be, make all the difference.” “But there’s more than ideas,” she protests. “This world.” She gestures at the fading sunset. “It’s not just our ideas.” “For some people it is. They don’t have anything else, maybe, so they give everything they have to ideas.” She shakes her head, still upset. “I would hate that. I would hate to be that way.” She gestures at the tiny angry faces on
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The Terrans themselves don’t actually spend much time outside, Freya thinks. Maybe they too are terrified. Maybe the proper response to standing on the side of a planet, in the open air of its atmosphere, very near to the local star, is always terror. Maybe everything humans ever did or planned to do was designed to dodge that terror. Maybe their plan to go to the stars was just one more expression of that terror.
And meanwhile, listen to me: kick the world, break your foot. And your feet, my girl, are already broken.”
Sometimes, you get sick of yourself, you change.
