Making One Life Matter

We ask, "What does one life matter in the grand scheme of things?", as if there could be a scheme of things grander than making one life matter. 

The Unconsulted

"We do not ask to be born, but neither do we ask to be the middle-aged result of some thoughless youth's indiscretion or the elderly remains of some middle-ager's mid-life crisis.  We are born someone else's creation, and at each stage of life we are the spawn of someone we once briefly were, and in neither case are we consulted in the matter."

Worth Repeating

"My advice, if you don't believe in miracles, is to marry someone who does."

"One thing that has always put me off about atheism is that atheists don't seem to struggle with it enough."

"It is only reality until some innovative individual decides they've put up with it long enough."

"It strikes me that if Mother Nature wanted us to know everything, she would not, at the very peak of our intellectual curiosity, distract us with puberty."

 

"I pray to God that He never makes me choose between a semi-private heaven and a private hell."

"It is said that travel is broadening, and so I have found it -- never failing to broaden my appreciation of home."

"What is a scientific fact but that tiny part of human perception that defies illogical explanation."

"When you speak, always tell the truth.  But don't always speak."

"It is a perversity of human nature to think that in order to find happiness we must abandon those who most wish it for us."

Meet You Then

 In the words, "I'm looking forward to it," you define nearly all of happiness.  So much of the pleasure of anything is in the anticipation.  Planning breakfast out with a friend?  Don't schedule it for tomorrow.  Schedule it for next week.

From The Archive

 As I labor these days to say something fresh and new,  I occasionally remind myself of how easy it used to seem.  Here, for example, is a single day's output from June 2014.  

 

"Sometimes we don't know what we want, and we blame our unhappiness on someone who doesn't know, either."

"Everything happens for the purpose of whatever you decide to do about it."

"So often people who have the same definition of fun have the same definition of love."

"I have found that winning isn't everything, and, in fact, in the relationships I most care about, it isn't anything.'"

"To truly forgive is to allow the other person to forget."

Sometimes Fate arranges that you be somewhere by yourself, so that you might be asked, "Are you here by yourself?"

"For every childhood question there is a preposterous answer that you weren't actually supposed to believe forever."

"To really know someone is to know the silence that stands for the thing they never speak of."

"There are times in life when the only difference between day and night is whether you're alone or alone by yourself."

"We are all human beings, subject to human weakness, often mistaken for betrayal."

"No matter how you hurry about, you will notice at the end of the day that you traveled at the speed of time."

From The Miscellany Drawer

 "I don't question the idea that it's never too late to repent.  I do question the idea that you can lie to God all your life, and He will believe you on your deathbed." 

"It is possible, in the rearrangement of facts, to create many fictions -- and more than one true story."

"Nothing unites people more defiantly than denying the same indisputable evidence."

"There are no louder defenders of privilege than the distant descendants of those who earned it."

Friendly Persuasion

 "Nothing makes you a decent person like having someone in your life who stubbornly operates under that assumption."