How High We Go in the Dark

by Sequoia Nagamatsu

she was just trying to keep track of it all because it didn’t seem like anybody else noticed or cared that we kept making the same mistakes, that hate in a neighborhood or injustice in a state ran like poison through veins, until another ice shelf collapsed or another animal went extinct. Everything is connected, she’d say.

You saw a future of dead soil and dead oceans, all of us fighting for our lives. You had a vision of what life would be like for future generations and acted like the planet had a gun to our head. And maybe it does.

Excuse me, excuse me. Have you seen my childhood?

“Opportunities are like little seeds floating in the wind. Your life is there. Some people have a big net to collect them all. Other people need to pray that the right seeds, the best ones, make their way to them with just enough bad ones to appreciate the good.”

I was never one to connect. I’ve been that way my entire life. I went to work, kept my head down, and came home. I let old friendships fizzle. I orbited my family and all of you like a distant planet—there and yet nearly impossible to reach. I know I can’t survive alone.

He wonders what proportion of happy moments to sad ones is necessary for a person to sincerely want to keep living

“People have forgotten how to care for each other, for themselves. We can’t expect them to care about the world if they don’t care about what’s in front of them,”

“Sometimes it might be the right thing to give yourself completely to someone. But from where I’m standing, you need to take care of yourself first, think about your future.

sometimes people and places serve a purpose for a finite amount of time to help you think and grow and love and then you move on.