Life

So many people walk around with a
meaningless life. They seem
half-asleep, even when they're
busy doing things they think are
important. This is because
they're chasing the wrong
things. The way you get meaning
into your life is to devote
yourself to loving others, devote
yourself to your community around
you, and devote yourself to
creating something that gives you
purpose and meaning.

Life will break you. Nobody can
protect you from that, and living
alone won't either, for solitude
will also break you with its
yearning. You have to love. You
have to feel. It is the reason you
are here on earth. You are here to
risk your heart. You are here to be
swallowed up. And when it happens
that you are broken, or betrayed,
or left, or hurt, or death brushes
near, let yourself sit by an apple
tree and listen to the apples
falling all around you in heaps,
wasting their sweetness. Tell
yourself you tasted as many as you
could.

I walk around the school hallways
and look at the people. I look at
the teachers and wonder why they're
here. If they like their jobs. Or
us. And I wonder how smart they
were when they were fifteen. Not in
a mean way. In a curious way. It's
like looking at all the students
and wondering who's had their heart
broken that day, and how they are
able to cope with having three
quizzes and a book report due on
top of that. Or wondering who did
the heart breaking. And wondering
why.

Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'.

Life will break you. Nobody can
protect you from that, and living
alone won't either, for solitude
will also break you with its
yearning. You have to love. You
have to feel. It is the reason you
are here on earth. You are here to
risk your heart. You are here to be
swallowed up. And when it happens
that you are broken, or betrayed,
or left, or hurt, or death brushes
near, let yourself sit by an apple
tree and listen to the apples
falling all around you in heaps,
wasting their sweetness. Tell
yourself you tasted as many as you
could...

...only in the surrender of the
light could the darkness prevail.

I wondered what happened when you
offered yourself to someone, and
they opened you, only to discover
you were not the gift they expected
and they had to smile and nod and
say thank you all the same.

I cannot fix on the hour, or the
spot, or the look or the words,
which laid the foundation. It is
too long ago. I was in the middle
before I knew that I had begun.

It was the best of times, it was
the worst of times, it was the age
of wisdom, it was the age of
foolishness . . . it was the season
of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of
hope, it was the winter of dispair,
we had everything before us, we had
nothing before us... (A Tale of
Two Cities)

Death is always on the way, but the
fact that you don't know when it
will arrive seems to take away from
the finiteness of life. It's that
terrible precision that we hate so
much. But because we don't know, we
get to think of life as an
inexhaustible well. Yet everything
happens a certain number of times,
and a very small number, really.
How many more times will you
remember a certain afternoon of
your childhood, some afternoon
that's so deeply a part of your
being that you can't even conceive
of your life without it? Perhaps
four or five times more. Perhaps
not even. How many more times will
you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty. And yet it all
seems limitless.