In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.
I... took some pride in ‘not fulfilling my potential,’ in part because I was terrified that if I tried my hardest, the world would learn I didn’t actually have that much potential.
I’m not sure why I find it beautiful to devote oneself obsessively to the creation of something that doesn’t matter, but I do.
Maybe we forget so that we can go on.
I suppose I missed writing, but in a way you miss someone you used to love.
When people we love are suffering, we want to make it better. But sometimes – often, in fact – you can’t make it better. I’m reminded of something my supervisor said to me when I was a student chaplain: “Don’t just do something. Stand there.
I am thoughtful – full of thoughts, all the time, inescapably, exhaustingly.
The five-star scale doesn’t really exist for humans; it exists for data aggregation systems, which is why it did not become standard until the internet era. Making conclusions about a book’s quality from a 175-word review is hard work for artificial intelligences, whereas star ratings are ideal for them.
I am glad to be unalone in cramped circles of restless yearning.
Knowing the facts doesn’t help me picture the truth.
And I think about the many broad seas that have roared between me and the past – seas of neglect, seas of time, seas of death. I’ll never again speak to many of the people who loved me into this moment, just as you will never speak to many of the people who loved you into your now. So we raise a glass to them – and hope that perhaps, somewhere, they are raising a glass to us.
There’s a certain way I talk about the things I don’t talk about. Maybe that’s true for all of us. We have ways of closing off the conversation so that we don’t ever get directly asked what we can’t bear to answer.
All of life is dependent upon other life, and the closer we consider what constitutes living, the harder life becomes to define.
What an astonishment to breathe on this breathing planet. What a blessing to be Earth loving Earth.
What you’re looking at matters, but not as much as how you’re looking or who you’re looking with.
A species that has only ever found its way to more must now find its way to less.
Beware of that monster called ‘self-loathing’.
In the Anthropocene there are no disinterested observers; there are only participants.
It’s no coincidence that the scientific revolution in Britain coincided with the rise of British participation in the Atlantic slave trade and the growing wealth being extracted from colonies and enslaved labor.
For days now, my brain has refused to allow me to finish a thought, constantly interrupting with worries. Even my worries get interrupted – by new worries, or facets of old worries I had not adequately considered. My thoughts are a river overflowing its banks, churning and muddy and ceaseless. I wish I wasn’t so scared all the time – scared of the virus, yes, but there is also some deeper fear: the terror of time passing, and me with it.