Exhalation

by Ted Chiang

Driven by the curiosity that impels men to look at the heads of the executed,

“Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false.”

Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.

Death is uncommon,

As soon as the question formed, the only possible answer became apparent: our sky must not be infinite in height.

Thus freed from having to see and magnify my own apprehensions, I was able to calm down.

through the act of reading my words, the patterns that form your thoughts become an imitation of the patterns that once formed mine. And in that way I live again, through you.

even if a universe’s life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not.

Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.

People used to speculate about a thought that destroys the thinker,

He gets a job at the firm that employs his wife, Wendy, animating virtual actors for television.

If she’s learned anything raising Jax, it’s that there are no shortcuts; if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task.

Did it really matter whose idea it was to take the vacation that turned out so disastrously?

By fixing every detail of an insult in indelible video, it could prevent the softening that’s needed for forgiveness to begin.

But writing the words down does more than help me remember. It helps me think.”

There are no photos of that moment, so I know the recollection is mine and mine alone. It is a lovely, idyllic memory. Would I want to be presented with actual footage of that afternoon? No; absolutely not.

People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments.

Right now each of us is a private oral culture. We rewrite our pasts to suit our needs and support the story we tell about ourselves.

I’ve told a story in order to make a case for the truth. I recognize the contradiction here.

I told them how thrilling it was to examine a piece of wood and know that the tree it came from was felled eight thousand years before the present.

I know I’ve broken rules in doing so, but it’s the rules that need to be changed, not my behavior.”

I was acting in accordance with your will, Lord, and your reason for making me. But if it’s in fact true that you have no purpose in mind for me, then that sense of fulfillment has arisen solely from within myself. What that demonstrates to me is that we as humans are capable of creating meaning for our own lives.