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The world was full of interesting words used to describe complicated things. There was tartle, a Scottish word for the panicked pause you experience when you have to introduce someone, but you don’t remember their name. There was backpafeifengesicht, a German term for a face you’d love to punch. There was gigil, a Filipino word for the urge to squeeze an item because it is unbearably cute.
“You have two choices. You can get in the passenger seat or you can stand there looking stupid as I drive away.”
“Guilt is a luxury and right now you can’t afford it,” Alessandro continued. “Do you want to be an adult or a child? Children require comfort even in a crisis, because they can’t understand how urgent things are. In a child’s world, it’s all about them: how this affects me, how this makes me feel, why is life so unfair? An adult sees a problem and tries to fix it. They think of other people and they plan their actions aware of the consequences. They understand that there will be time to deal with grief and loss after the danger is over.”
In human history whenever one social group enslaved another, the slaves suffered until they could take no more, and it always ended in an explosion of violence.
