To accept the demonization of the marginalized as inevitable is to give up on the whole human enterprise.
He showed me that you could be crazy and still be human, still be valuable, and still be loved.
We live in hope – that life will get better, and more importantly that it will go on, that love will survive even though we will not. And between now and then, we are here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.
Rivers keep going, and we keep going, and there is no way back to the roof of that hotel. But the memory still holds me together.
Never predict the end of the world. You’re almost certain to be wrong, and if you’re right, no one will be around to congratulate you.
The only way out is through.” And the only good way through is together.
They won’t be okay, of course, but they will go on, and the love you poured into them will go on.
Now always feels infinite and never is. I was wrong about life’s meaninglessness when I was a teenager, and I’m wrong about it now. The truth is far more complicated than mere hopelessness.
I was thinking about the people I used to be, and how they fought and scrapped and survived for moments like this one.
I still sometimes stop hearing the tune. I still become enveloped by the abject pain of hopelessness. But hope is singing all the while. It’s just that again and again, I must relearn how to listen.
I miss the luxury of caring about stuff that doesn’t matter.
These days, after drinking from the internet’s fire hose for thirty years, I’ve begun to feel more of those negative effects. I don’t know if it’s my age, or the fact that the internet is no longer plugged into the wall and now travels with me everywhere I go, but I find myself thinking of that Wordsworth poem that begins, “The world is too much with us; late and soon.
I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die, and I can’t stop them. They leave me, and I love them more.
For most of my life, I’ve believed we’re in the fourth quarter of human history, and perhaps even the last days of it. But lately, I’ve come to believe that such despair only worsens our already slim chance at long-term survival. We must fight like there is something to fight for, like we are something worth fighting for, because we are. And so I choose to believe that we are not approaching the apocalypse, that the end is not coming, and that we will find a way to survive the coming changes.
Depression is exhausting. It gets old so fast, listening to the elaborate prose of your brain tell you that you’re an idiot for even trying.
I have a friend, Alex, who is one of those impossibly easygoing, imperturbable souls who can instantly recalibrate when faced with a shift in circumstance. But occasionally, when on a tight schedule, Alex will become visibly stressed and say things like, ‘We’ve got to get a move on.’ Alex’s wife, Linda, calls this ‘Airport Alex.’ Much to my chagrin, I am always Airport Alex.
There was so much news. News that was forever breaking, that there was never time for context.
I have some way-down vibrating part of my subconscious that needs to self-destruct, at least a little bit.
We are so powerful that we have escaped our planet’s atmosphere. But we are not powerful enough to save those we love from suffering.
For me, reading and rereading are an everlasting apprenticeship.