The Moth Presents: All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown

by Catherine Burns

Honesty matters. Vulnerability matters. Being open about who you were at a moment in time when you were in a difficult or an impossible place matters more than anything.

And once we hear each other’s stories we realize that the things we see as dividing us are, all too often, illusions, falsehoods: that the walls between us are in truth no thicker than scenery. The Moth teaches us not to judge by appearances. It teaches us to listen. It reminds us to empathize. And now, with these wonderful stories, it teaches us to read.

And while most of us aren’t rocket scientists, we all have moments in life when we are forced off the map. Sometimes it’s by choice, metaphorically stepping into uncharted waters (“Here Be Dragons” as the sixteenth-century globes claimed). Other times we get shoved there against our will by another person or by the Fates.

But the stories in this book show us that when we dare to face the unknown, we usually discover that we have more grit and tenacity than we thought. And we often land in a place that we couldn’t even have imagined when we started out.

The number-one quality of all great storytellers is their willingness to be vulnerable, to tell on themselves in front of thousands. Each story told is a gift to the listeners.

Sometimes it is easier to try to make sense of the world one story at a time.

And when we dare to listen, we remember that there is no “other,” there is only us, and what we have in common will always be greater than what separates us.

All I knew, really, up until this point in my life, was struggle. This was what I had come to expect from life, and I didn’t trust in happiness or any kind of normality at all.

“Just walk fearlessly into the house of mourning, for grief is just love squaring up to its oldest enemy. And after all these mortal human years, love is up to the challenge.”

“We all fall, and it matters. But when the fall is all you have left, it matters a great deal.”

It’s like you’re starving to death, and there’s one source of food, and it’s this apple down between these rocks. You can reach your hand in and grab it, but you can’t pull it out while holding it. And this is your life.

So I did what we do with feelings that make us feel bad about ourselves: I just shoved them all the way down and pretended they weren’t there.

This is what I know. In the deepest, blackest night of despair, if you can get just one pinhole of light…all of grace rushes in.

And I’m thinking about the fact that we imagine that we live in the light. We imagine we can foresee what’s gonna happen. We imagine we can control everything: I’m gonna do this, and I’m gonna do that. But the reality is, almost all of us are just stumbling along in the dark, searching, trying to reach some kind of home, while we’re juggling all these balls and hopefully on most days keeping them afloat.

you have to be brave, and the courage to do what’s right has to be greater than your fear of getting hurt.”

I wait for that big gut punch to hit me, for that big hole to open up. That emptiness. But instead I feel the strangest thing, the purest thing I’ve ever felt. I just feel sad. And it feels white. And it feels hot. And it envelops me. And I feel full.