Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind Quotes

“Common phrase would lead one to believe human beings carry feelings primarily in their heart. Yet no matter how many times Abernathy searches the chambers of his chest for the source, he finds the sadness that pervades his life originating not in his heart, or his gut, his elbows, or his mouth, or his hands.

Sometimes, in moments of desperation, he thinks he must carry despair in his blood. How else to explain the fact that though he tries his best to be happy, anguish moves so fast inside him, everywhere. Everywhere and all at once.”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“Abernathy wants it both ways. Sitting on the floor of the dream archives, it's early enough in the morning that he can maintain his delusion: the separation of his personhood and his employment. That he can be a moral person in one and not the other. That what is "right" does not apply in settings where money is traded. That he can indeed compartmentalize his life into two discrete units which don't apply force against the other.”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“The children near them swap secrets in whiny pre-teen voices, gossiping about friendships and romances and other petty school dramas. They seem not to see Abernathy or his new auditor. They have no idea what awaits them. Not the slightest hint that their friendships are fleeting, their wills to live soon to be devoured, a working world waiting to swallow them alive, their children, though they are just children themselves, already doomed to die. They have no idea that they will struggle to meet even their most basic needs as they hurtle through a marketplace inhospitable to human functions and that they will be fated to take this inhospitability personally, as we all are, as if it were their fault they could not simply work harder, faster, longer. The collapse of their personhood is only a few scant years away, yet these lanky adolescents remain oblivious. All of them, every single one, will have to sell their life to someone, for something. They appear now, before such a collapse, to be happy. Which, to Abernathy, is particularly a depressing contrast.”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“What does it mean to be successful? People ask themselves this question to the point of obsession. They believe it is their mission in life to "succeed," as if life is something to be climbed on top of and bested.

Abernathy is one such person.

Though, of course, like most people who are afflicted by preoccupation with success, he remains oblivious to the true pleasures in life. As such, he is willing to sacrifice them.”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“He is mostly thinking of the constant low-grade panic of his life before this job. The feeling of not being good enough. That knee-jerk knowledge that he is not meant to live in the current iteration of this world. He is simply not capable of existing how others exist.”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“He has been in this position before, so knows relief is soon incoming. All Abernathy must do is await a DEATH OF THE SELF to kick in. DEATH OF THE SELF is a type of thing his brain does whenever he has to keep on keeping on. You know, despite it all. Once his self dies (the ego-y, embarrassed part of him that feels things), he can do anything. He can work sixteen doubles, dumpster dive at midnight, walk three hours home in the rain, you name it. Experience tragedy. Homelessness. Loss. If there is no one inside him, if he vacates his own body's premises, there is no one to experience the humiliation that goes hand in hand with poverty.”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“Though he does not know this about himself, having feelings is pretty much the only thing Abernathy does.”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“that thin veil of potential which can grant someone so much invisible power. It’s not until such veils are lost that you realize what such a veil gave you: hope, a future, a chance to change your path, optimism in the life destined to come. Which is to say that when others believe you to have potential they create opportunity for you. Without others, there is nothing. Without belief in ourselves, we cannot acquire the belief of strangers. Without the belief of strangers, we have no institutions. Without institutions, we have nothing to measure ourselves by, and the question becomes: Why believe ourselves at all?”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO be successful? People ask themselves this question to the point of obsession. They believe it is their mission in life to “succeed,” as if life is something to be climbed on top of and bested.”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“Even though he knew she doubted her own strength, he left her alone to carry the weight. He left her alone. He left her fear so that he would not have to sit with his.”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“men just have more energy for this sort of thing. For them there is simply less to do. They can afford to keep pushing when a single mother has to give in.”
― Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind