Death makes human beings seem like very small containers that are packed so densely we can only be aware of a fraction of what's inside us from moment to moment. Being in the presence of death can break you open, disgorging feelings that are deeper and more powerful than anything you thought you knew.
Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have to absorb more and more of the world and at last take all of it up in your painfully expanded soul, if you are ever to find peace.
1mo ago
We do not receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
2mo ago
We must not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.
To try to save ourselves from the despair by which we contour hope, to spare ourselves the fertile doubt and the gasps of self-surprise by which we discover who we really are, is to live a safe distance from alive.
3mo ago
We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.
Reflecting on these efforts, it strikes me that in much the same way I would fill in all the action in a comic book between the panels, I was reaching to understand adult relations—an unchartered land of intrigue, heartbreak and some little thing called "love". There was no guide, there was no chatbot to inquire of.
Perhaps the sharpest, most recurrent shock of being alive is the realization that no one can give you a ready-made answer — not your parents or your teachers, not scripture or Stoicism, not psychotherapy or psilocybin, not the old dharma teacher or the new pope.
8mo ago
The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.
8mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
