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In communities surrounded by wilderness people are connected by invisible threads, but also by sharp hooks, so when one turns too suddenly, it isn’t always just their shirt that someone else loses. Sometimes it rips the heart out of all of us.
Every now and then their dad gently puts one hand on his sons’ and daughter’s backs, one at a time, to make sure they’re still breathing. There’s no good reason to suspect that they aren’t, but there’s nothing reasonable about being a parent.
The only thing everyone said when he was about to become a father was: “Don’t worry.” What a meaningless thing to say. There’s an immensity of love that bursts from your chest the first time you hear your child cry, every emotion you’ve ever felt is amplified to the point of absurdity, children open floodgates inside us, upward as well as down. You’ve never felt so happy, and never felt so scared. Don’t say “don’t worry” to someone in that position. You can’t love someone like this without worrying about everything, forever.
“You get success by having extremely high integrity but absolutely zero prestige. Because integrity is about who you are, whereas prestige is only about what other people think of you.”
“If you want to achieve what no one else can, you have to do what no one else wants to do.”
One simple, painful truth for all teenagers is that their lives are rarely defined by what they do, what really matters is what they almost do.
Love demands a whole person, all the best of you, all the worst. It has nothing to do with romance, because the hard part of a marriage isn’t that I have to live seeing all your faults, but that you have to live with me seeing them. That I know everything about you now. Most people aren’t brave enough to live without secrets. Everyone dreams about being invisible sometimes, no one dreams of being transparent.
“The simplest explanation is often the truth.”
If you don’t feel pressure, that’s just because you’ve never done anything valuable enough for people to have expectations of you.”
Children’s screams aren’t their best weapon. Silence is. The only advantage parents have is that it takes kids years to realize that.
As a child she missed her dad, but as an adult she has gained a friend.
All teenagers have a window when they have the chance to fulfill their potential, but no one is ever prepared for how quickly that window closes.
“The mongoose wins because it adapts. The snake lunges the same way every time, without thinking, without learning anything, but the mongoose bases its attack on all previous attacks. It tests and evaluates, jumps back, entices the snake to attack farther and farther away. Because when the snake is completely stretched out it’s at its slowest and most defenseless. So the mongoose bides its time, feints, then counters the snake’s lunge with a single bite right through the snake’s brain. It looks like luck, every time, but it ISN’T luck.
All children are victims of their parents’ childhoods, because all adults try to give their kids what they themselves enjoyed or lacked. In the end everything is either a revolt against the adults we encountered or an attempt to copy them. That’s why someone who hated their own childhood often has greater empathy than someone who loved theirs. Because someone who had a hard time dreamed of other realities, but someone who had it easy can hardly imagine that things could be any different. We take happiness so easily for granted if we’ve had it from the start.
