Honor

by Thrity Umrigar

how easily people made excuses for their past misdeeds. Nobody was the villain in his or her own life story.

school shooting: a flurry of news stories, the sanctimonious tweets about thoughts and prayers, the predictable calls for gun control reform and then—silence. Parents and other survivors were left to their private lifelong grief, permanently out of step with a world that had moved on.

We were suddenly made to feel like strangers in the only home we’d ever known.

that life is about interconnectedness, interdependence, and yes, even sacrifice?

Maybe, in the end, that’s all that love was—doing the hard thing. Not roses and valentines and walks on the beach, but simply being present, day after ordinary day. The extraordinary romanticism of ordinary life.