The Art of Racing in the Rain
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Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And while I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively.
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And that’s why I’m here now waiting for Denny to come home—he should be here soon—lying on the cool tiles of the kitchen floor in a puddle of my own urine.
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It’s the right thing for Denny to do. He’s done so much for me, my whole life. I owe him the gift of setting him free.
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People and their rituals. They cling to things so hard sometimes.
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Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present.
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Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.
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I had always wanted to love Eve as Denny loved her, but I never had because I was afraid. She was my rain. She was my unpredictable element. She was my fear. But a racer should not be afraid of rain; a racer should embrace the rain. I, alone, could manifest a change in that which was around me. By changing my mood, my energy, I allowed Eve to regard me differently. And while I cannot say that I am a master of my own destiny, I can say that I have experienced a glimpse of mastery, and I know what I have to work toward.
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It makes one realize that the physicality of our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible.
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People like to think they have evolved beyond instinct, but in fact, they still have fight-or-flight responses to stimuli.
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“If it was anybody’s fault,” Denny said, “it was mine for being where I could get collected.”
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Any problems that may occur have ultimately been caused by you, because you are responsible for where you are and what you are doing there.
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Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.
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People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication.
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how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than doing what is most expedient.
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I wondered why they had waited for Eve’s illness to make themselves available for companionship.
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The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles—preferably of his own making—in order to triumph.
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A hero without a flaw is of no interest to an audience or to the universe, which, after all, is based on conflict and opposition, the irresistible force meeting the unmovable object.
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(I believe that people were not so allergic to their environment until they began polluting themselves and their world with so many drugs and toxins. But then, nobody asked me.)
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“Sometimes bad things happen,”
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“Sometimes things change, and we have to change, too.”
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To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life, as Eve felt the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to. When I am a person, that is how I will live my life.
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People are always worried about what’s happening next.
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People are not generally satisfied with what they have; they are very concerned with what they are going to have.
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being alone is not the same as being lonely?
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That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me.
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Many of us have convinced ourselves that compromise is necessary to achieve our goals, that all of our goals are not attainable so we should eliminate the extraneous, prioritize our desires, and accept less than the moon.
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“There is no dishonor in losing the race,”
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“There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.”
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The race is long. It is better to drive within oneself and finish the race behind the others than it is to drive too hard and crash.
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soul has learned what it came to learn, and all the other things are just things. We can’t have everything we want. Sometimes, we simply have to believe.