Here I Am

by Jonathan Safran Foer

They’d lost their way, and lost their compass, but not their belief that it was possible to get back—even if neither knew exactly what happiness she was referring to.

“There’s a Hasidic proverb: ‘While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.’”

They loved each other’s company, and would always choose it over either aloneness or the company of anyone else, but the more comfort they found together, the more life they shared, the more estranged they became from their inner lives.

She never knew what to do with the feeling of wanting more for herself: time, space, quiet.

There are three ascending levels of mourning: with tears, with silence, and with song.

Giving a word to a thing is to give it life. ‘Let there be light,’ God said, and there was light. No magic. No raised hands and thunder. The articulation made it possible.

But sons do feel pain. And the absence of the expression of pain is not the absence of pain. It is a different pain.

“Did you ever stop to ask yourself why you put such an emphasis on feeling?” “What else would one put an emphasis on?” “Peace.”

Without love, you die. With love, you also die. Not all deaths are equal.

“It’s easy to be close, but almost impossible to stay close. Think about friends. Think about hobbies. Even ideas. They’re close to us—sometimes so close we think they are part of us—and then, at some point, they aren’t close anymore. They go away. Only one thing can keep something close over time: holding it there. Grappling with it. Wrestling it to the ground, as Jacob did with the angel, and refusing to let go. What we don’t wrestle we let go of. Love isn’t the absence of struggle. Love is struggle.”