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But, hey, that’s life. I found it a lot more enjoyable to read all of Balzac than to delve into the principles of calculus.”
“There’s nothing worth getting in this world that you can get easily.” Then, as if starting a new paragraph, he briefly cleared his throat. “But, when you put in that much time and effort, if you do achieve that difficult thing it becomes the cream of your life.”
“Things like this happen sometimes in our lives,” I told him. “Inexplicable, illogical events that nevertheless are deeply disturbing. I guess we need to not think about them, just close our eyes and get through them. As if we were passing under a huge wave.”
Your brain is made to think about difficult things. To help you get to a point where you understand something that you didn’t understand at first. And that becomes the cream of your life. The rest is boring and worthless.
What I couldn’t yet grasp were all the myriad phenomenon that lay in the space between happiness and sadness, how they related to each other. As a result, I often felt anxious and helpless.
“Loving someone is like having a mental illness that’s not covered by health insurance,”
The death of a dream can be, in a way, sadder than that of a living being. Sometimes it all seems so unfair.
I’ve heard it said that the happiest time in our lives is the period when pop songs really mean something to us, really get to us. It may be true. Or maybe not. Pop songs may, after all, be nothing but pop songs. And perhaps our lives are merely decorative, expendable items, a burst of fleeting color and nothing more.
Me, I was much more into John Coltrane’s magical version of “My Favorite Things,” but I figured that bringing that up with her was pointless, so I never did.
“Hello, Goodbye.” You say goodbye, and I say hello. As I said before, their music was everywhere then, surrounding us like wallpaper.
No matter how vivid memories may be, they can’t win out against the power of time.
And it was that very uniqueness that drew people to her. Like a magnet attracts all sorts of metal to itself—some useful, some worthless.
It’s true that life brings us far more defeats than victories. And real-life wisdom arises not so much from knowing how we might beat someone as from learning how to accept defeat with grace.
Of course, winning is much better than losing. No argument there. But winning or losing doesn’t affect the weight and value of the time. It’s the same time, either way. A minute is a
minute, an hour is an hour. We need to cherish it. We need to deftly reconcile ourselves with time, and leave behind as many precious memories as we can—that’s what’s the most valuable.
I want to face people in the world and apologize to each and every one. “I’m sorry, but all I have is dark beer.” But no matter. Let’s not get into novels here.
