Bewilderment

by Richard Powers

Oddly enough, there’s no name in the DSM for the compulsion to diagnose people.

“There are four good things worth practicing. Being kind toward everything alive. Staying level and steady. Feeling happy for any creature anywhere that is happy. And remembering that any suffering is also yours.”

The fit between us was rough but useful. I gave her stamina and fed her curiosity. She taught me optimism and appetite, albeit plant-based. There it was: roll the dice and find your life catalyzed by another, one who, ten minutes later or three seats farther down at another computer screen, would have remained an undetected signal from deep space.

“I don’t know, Robbie. She went back into the system. She became other creatures. All the good things in her came into us. Now we keep her alive, with whatever we can remember.”

knock on the door. Is everybody okay in there? My wife, vigilant ecstatic, took all her will to keep from laughing. So okay, honey! Everybody’s so okay.

as. The whole kaleidoscopic pageant of them, parading through time and space, was itself a work in progress.

that. Trouble is what creates intelligence? I said yes. Crisis and change and upheaval. His voice turned sad and wondrous. Then we’ll never find anyone smarter than us.

These days we like to say that ‘mature’ is just another name for ‘lazy.’ ”

“Theo! What a pleasure!” He must have meant something different by the word than everyone else did. Every syllable the man spoke irritated me. I needed a stint or two in his empathy machine. “How’s the boy doing?”

Earth had two kinds of people: those who could do the math and follow the science, and those who were happier with their own truths. But in our hearts’ daily practice, whatever schools we went to, we all lived as if tomorrow would be a clone of now.

painting while quoting Sagan: We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.