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

by Catherine Burns

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.

We live in a world where bearing witness to a stranger’s unfiltered story is an act of tremendous compassion. To listen with an open heart and an open mind and try to understand what it’s like to be them—why they think like that, dress like that, made the choices they did—takes real courage.

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

“Everything that has a beginning must have an end. Those are the facts. I don’t like them, but I’ve accepted them, and I will not take any heroic measures to prolong my life beyond the inevitable. I’m resolved to live my life out with intact mind.”

Look, the minute you let other people start to define you, you are just giving away your power.”

I had gotten to see that there was this completely random love in the universe. That it could be unconditional. And that some of it was for me.

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.

Brave men are always afraid. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the willingness—the guts, if you like—to face the fear.

At friends who disappeared. I had friends who were there, but acted as if everything was fine. I was angry at anyone who had a typical child, or a typical baby, or anybody who was pregnant and joyful.

She said that things were going to be however they were going to be—because of us and in spite of us.

When I returned home, I didn’t see the people who weren’t there. I saw the people who were there, and who wanted to be there.

I found this kind of acceptance of myself, and where I’d been, and I thought, You know, it’s fine. If this is what it is, if this is it, I’m okay with that. I can die in my twenties.

“Love is that candle. Love does not seek another death. Love brings life and healing and wholeness.”

Because I think when you forgive someone, you start to care about them.

Revenge and anger hold you in the past; forgiveness can free you to go into the future.

I think forgiveness is possible, even for the worst among us. And I do believe we all need forgiveness, God knows.