From the Corner of the Oval

by Beck Dorey-Stein

The best way to manage a fear is to adopt its ferocity as your own.

Despite all the horrible news in the world, there are still moments of light.

POTUS grabs my attention when he says the narrative of history is long, and “We just try to get our paragraph right.” Life is short and this world is big. Get your paragraph right.

“Sometimes it’s what people don’t do that hurts the most.”

I can only wonder at the speed of time passing, at the happenstance that dictates the direction of our lives.

Whom are we protecting if not the children of Newtown, brutalized beyond recognition by an assault rifle, whose parents could not convince an NRA-fearing Republican Congress to pass a single piece of gun reform legislation? Whom are we protecting if not fifteen-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, shot and killed after taking her final exams? What the hell are we doing? And was it always this bad? Was the world always on fire and I hadn’t been looking up?

“The future is won by those who build and not destroy,” POTUS says.

why. If we are lucky, we turn out to be nothing but wiser, happier versions of our younger, stupider selves. If we are lucky, we wind up with jobs we could never have imagined and friends who run right beside us, down the stairs and out the door and onto the empty beach.

Cynicism is fashionable these days. But I got to tell you, cynicism didn’t put a man on the moon. Cynicism did not create the opportunity for all our citizens to vote. Cynicism has never won a war, or cured a disease, or started a business, or fed young minds. I believe in optimism. I believe in hope…Don’t let the cynics get you down. Cynicism is a choice—and hope is a better choice.

“Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter.”

As Michael Jordan said: “Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.”

You hit singles, you hit doubles; every once in a while we may be able to hit a home run. But we steadily advance the interests of the American people and our partnership with folks around the world.”

I prefer my men somewhere between Shaq and Sasquatch size.

Mark Twain said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

The world is what you make of it.

“Life is too short to allow yourself to be treated badly,”

I know that that sassy little minx called love will find me when I’m ready,

“It says the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

You can’t keep the end from ending.