Lincoln in the Bardo

by George Saunders

Strange, isn’t it? To have dedicated one’s life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one’s life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one’s labors utterly forgotten?

To be grouped with these, accepting one’s sins so passively, even proudly, with no trace of repentance? I could not bear it; must I, even now, be beyond all hope? (Perhaps, I thought, this is faith: to believe our God ever receptive to the smallest good intention.)

At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end, the many losses we must experience on the way to that end.