More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
September 17 - September 18, 2018
But the truth is that I’m always teetering between a mature acceptance of life’s immutables and a childish railing against the very same. In the time it takes to get the mail, I can slide from sanguine and full of purpose to pissed off and fuming.
Unfortunately, Oh, well usually comes out of my mouth as Motherfucker.”
“Accepting things as they are is difficult. A lot of people go to war with reality.”
Minds don’t rest; they reel and wander and fixate and roll back and reconsider because it’s like this, having a mind. Hearts don’t idle; they swell and constrict and break and forgive and behold because it’s like this, having a heart. Lives don’t last; they thrill and confound and circle and overflow and disappear because it’s like this, having a life.
am cheap. I am lazy. I am impatient. This makes me a fan of microwaved dinners, baseball hats, and the Swiffer.
Busted, I would nod through his blah blah blah about slowing down or what painter’s tape is for. He didn’t understand the way my projects made me tingle with can-do. He couldn’t see that each undertaking I “finished” left me drunk with accomplishment.
“Makes you wonder what else people might tell you if you just keep asking questions.”
The closest I come to prayer is to give a nod of thanks for a just-right avocado or an ache that’s resolved or a five-star public school teacher like Ms. McKuen.
As Voltaire said: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery.
You can’t be really loved if you can’t bear to be really known.
But then we became civilized. We aged into self-consciousness. Saying no started to feel rude or insubordinate, mean or lazy, withholding or dangerous. There’s hardly a positive intention associated with no. Except self-preservation.
What took me much longer to understand is that to love someone is to love the people they love, or at least, try.
Me: nothing if not competent. Me and my little life: good enough.
As for the rest of our permanent relationships, where people know each other too well, I find it nearly incomprehensible that, in spite of every offense and oversight, we can still say I love you and mean it. I believe this emotional largesse is sometimes called forgiveness.
We forgive: Our parents, for being wrong about us in so many ways, for seeing some things and not others, for missing the point.
Or from one sibling to another, I love you is not I love the way we instantly make sense to each other and fall into plans effortlessly and always remember each other’s birthdays. It’s Even though we hardly agree about a thing, including who should be president, how often we should call each other, or even where to get hoagies, I love you.
The first time the words pass between two people: electrifying. Ten thousand times later: cause for marvel. The last time: the dream you revisit over and over and over again.
