Despair Anime Quotes

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.

For animals, life is all there is; for man, life is a question mark. An irreversible question mark, for man has never found, nor will ever find, any answers. Life not only has no meaning; it can never have one.

From the girl who sat before me now...surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer. To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, "A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God." The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours not by right but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God. While there is much we may have earned--our degree and our salary, our home and garden, a Miller Lite and a good night's sleep--all this is possible only because we have been given so much: life itself, eyes to see and hands to touch, a mind to shape ideas, and a heart to beat with love. We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. This and so much more is sheer gift; it is not reward for our faithfulness, our generous disposition, or our heroic life of prayer. Even our fidelity is a gift, "If we but turn to God," said St. Augustine, "that itself is a gift of God." My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

Her beauty is not just—or even primarily—physical. In her face, I see her wisdom, her compassion, her courage, her eternal glory. This other beauty, this spiritual beauty—which is the deepest truth of her—sustains me in times of fear and despair, as other truths might sustain a priest enduring martyrdom at the hands of a tyrant. I see nothing blasphemous in equating her grace with the mercy of God, for the one is a reflection of the other. The selfless love that we give to others to the point of being willing to sacrifice our lives for them, is all the proof I need that human beings are not mere animals of self-interest; we carry within us a divine spark, and if we chose to recognize it, our lives have dignity, meaning, hope. In her it is spark is bright, a light that heals rather than wounds me.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.

Wild Geese" You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Animal banished from life, man's condition is tragic, for he no longer finds fulfillment in life's simple values. For animals, life is all there is; for man, life is a question mark. An irreversible question mark, for man has never found, nor will ever find, any answers. Life not only has no meaning; it can never have one.

Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn't — not because it's optimistic, but because it can't take ideals seriously in the first place. The prevailing attitude is Absurdism. A postmodern magazine may be irreverent, but not bitterly irreverent, for it's not purposefully irreverent; its aim is indiscriminate, because everyone is equally ridiculous. And anyway, there's no moral basis for passing judgment. Just sit back and enjoy the show.

Men, however, shouldn't despair. They are excellent at identifying and imitating animal sounds, which would have been a significant advantage for the ancient hunter. Sadly, that's not quite as much use today.

Why keep in touch with them? That's what I want to know,' asked Larry despairingly. 'What satisfaction does it give you? They're all either fossilized or mental.' 'Indeed, they're not mental,' said Mother indignantly. 'Nonsense, Mother... Look at Aunt Bertha, keeping flocks of imaginary cats... and there's Great-Uncle Patrick, who wanders about nude and tells complete strangers how he killed whales with a penknife...They're all bats.

That dead-eyed anhedonia is but a remora on the ventral flank of the true predator, the Great White Shark of pain. Authorities term this condition clinical depression or involutional depression or unipolar dysphoria. Instead of just an incapacity for feeling, a deadening of soul, the predator-grade depression Kate Gompert always feels as she Withdraws from secret marijuana is itself a feeling. It goes by many names — anguish, despair, torment, or q.v. Burton's melancholia or Yevtuschenko's more authoritative psychotic depression — but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as It. It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self's most elementary levels. It is a nausea of the cells and soul. It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its black folds and absorbs into Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every constituent of which means painful harm to the self. Its emotional character, the feeling Gompert describes It as, is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency — sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying — are not just unpleasant but literally horrible. It is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed. There is no way Kate Gompert could ever even begin to make someone else understand what clinical depression feels like, not even another person who is herself clinically depressed, because a person in such a state is incapable of empathy with any other living thing. This anhedonic Inability To Identify is also an integral part of It. If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain, a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a hell for one. The authoritative term psychotic depression makes Kate Gompert feel especially lonely. Specifically the psychotic part. Think of it this way. Two people are screaming in pain. One of them is being tortured with electric current. The other is not. The screamer who's being tortured with electric current is not psychotic: her screams are circumstantially appropriate. The screaming person who's not being tortured, however, is psychotic, since the outside parties making the diagnoses can see no electrodes or measurable amperage. One of the least pleasant things about being psychotically depressed on a ward full of psychotically depressed patients is coming to see that none of them is really psychotic, that their screams are entirely appropriate to certain circumstances part of whose special charm is that they are undetectable by any outside party. Thus the loneliness: it's a closed circuit: the current is both applied and received from within.

There is a paradox in fiction that was first noticed by Aristotle in the Poetics. We are drawn to fiction because fiction gives us pleasure. But most of what is actually in fiction is deeply unpleasant: threat, death, despair, anxiety, Sturm und Drang.

Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort--a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance.

Logic and morality made it impossible to accept an illogical and immoral reality; they engendered a rejection of reality which as a rule led the cultivated man rapidly to despair. But the varieties of the man-animal are innumerable, and I saw and have described men of refined culture, especially if young, throw all this overboard, simplify and barbarize themselves, and survive. A simple man, accustomed not to ask questions of himself, was beyond the reach of the useless torment of asking himself why. The harsher the oppression, the more widespread among the oppressed is the willingness, with all its infinite nuances and motivations, to collaborate: terror, ideological seduction, servile imitation of the victor, myopic desire for any power whatsoever… Certainly, the greatest responsibility lies with the system, the very structure of the totalitarian state; the concurrent guilt on the part of individual big and small collaborators is always difficult to evaluate… they are the vectors and instruments of the system’s guilt… the room for choices (especially moral choices) was reduced to zero

The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her—her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever-seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that ‘It isn’t the same for them as it would be for us,’ and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her—understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.

It was a uniquely human problem, something no other animal had to put up with, this ability to suffer in multiple tenses – simultaneously to mourn the past, despair of the present and fear the future.

Now The Head Lines How do you like your truth? Gently spoken on breakfast TV By a man and a woman who sit comfortably Saying riots, and murder, when will it end? As they struggle to act as if they are good friends. How do you like your truth? Bite-sized in sound bites cut easy to chew, With a talking head saying the victim's like you And when you've digested the horrors you've seen You find good, you find evil, and no in-between. How do you like your truth? Fantastic, sensational, printed in bold, Today it's exclusive, tomorrow it's old, All on the surface with nothin too deep With a story about animals to help you to sleep How do you like your youth? From perfect families with parents thet care, Or in perfect families but still in despair, Ten out of ten parents say they'd not choose To have bad kids like those in the news.

When I see those sad, abused and neglected animals on those commercials I feel despair for the human race. Too many people repay loyalty with faithlessness and give no thought to their own final hours when the might have to ask another to grant them the mercy that they withheld from those who trusted them.

History may be a succession of absurdities, tragedies and crimes; but – everyone insists – the future can still be better than anything in the past. To give up this hope would induce a state of despair

The more I dim my eyes over print and frazzle my brain over abstract ideas, the more I appreciate the delight of being basically an animal wrapped in a sensitive skin: sex, the resistance of rock, the taste and touch of snow, the feel of the sun, good wine and a rare beefsteak and the company of friends around a fire with a guitar and lousy old cowboy songs. Despair: I'll never be a scholar, never be a decent good Christian. Just a hedonist, a pagan, a primitive romantic

See this abdicated beast, once king Of them all, nibble his claws: Not anger enough left—no, nor despair— To break his teeth on the bars.

Once, in the South Atlantic, I saw a whaler in the process of killing a female accompanied by one of her offspring. The harpooner, a red-bearded Irishman, kept putting harpoons into the whale. The intestines were hanging out of the mangled body of the huge animal, and nevertheless it continued to swim back and forth in the water made red by its blood, trying with its shattered body to shield the little whale. Since then, and the sight of that harpooner's freckled face as he laughed derisively, and of that poor creature, faithful to the end, I have believed in the existence of Satan as I believe in the existence of God.

Man is the only animal species capable of conceiving the notion of his own disappearance, and the only one capable of the despair that notion brings. What a strange race: so savagely determined to destroy itself, so savagely intent on preserving itself.

Oxford It is well that there are palaces of peace And discipline and dreaming and desire, Lest we forget our heritage and cease The Spirit’s work—to hunger and aspire: Lest we forget that we were born divine, Now tangled in red battle’s animal net, Murder the work and lust the anodyne, Pains of the beast ‘gainst bestial solace set. But this shall never be: to us remains One city that has nothing of the beast, That was not built for gross, material gains, Sharp, wolfish power or empire’s glutted feast. We are not wholly brute. To us remains A clean, sweet city lulled by ancient streams, A place of visions and of loosening chains, A refuge of the elect, a tower of dreams. She was not builded out of common stone But out of all men’s yearning and all prayer That she might live, eternally our own, The Spirit’s stronghold—barred against despair.

Cînd mă gîndesc la faptul că mizeria este strîns legată de existenţa omenească, nu mai pot adera la nici o teorie şi la nici o doctrină de reformă socială. Toate îmi par egal de stupide şi de inutile. Chiar şi tăcerea îmi pare un urlet. Animalele, care trăiesc fiecare din silinţa lor, nu cunosc mizeria, fiindcă nu cunosc ierarhia şi dependenţa unora de alţii. Fenomenul mizeriei apare numai la om, fiindcă numai el a putut să-şi creeze din semen un supus. Nici un animal nu-şi bate joc de altul, asemănător pînă la identitate cu el. Numai omul este capabil de atît autodispreţ. Toată caritatea din lume nu face decît să evidenţieze şi mai mult mizeria, arătînd-o mai îngrozitoare şi mai ininteligibilă decît în părăsirea absolută. Ca şi în faţa ruinelor, în mizerie te doare vidul de umanitate, regretul că oamenii nu schimbă esenţial ceea ce este în putinţa lor de a schimba. De altă parte, acest sentiment se combină cu unul al imanenţei şi eternităţii mizeriei, al caracterului ei ineluctabil şi fatal, acolo unde există viaţă omenească. Deşi ştii că oamenii ar putea înlătura mizeria, îţi dai totuşi seama de veşnicia ei, dînd astfel naştere la un sentiment neobişnuit de nelinişte amară, la o stare sufletească paradoxală şi tulbure, în care omul apare în toată inconsistenţa şi mizeria lui. Căci mizeria obiectivă din viaţa socială nu este decît un reflex palid al infinitei lui mizerii lăuntrice. Nu admit o revoltă relativă în faţa nedreptăţilor, ci numai o revoltă eternă, fiindcă eternă este mizeria în umanitate.

I have this notion that maybe this world is the hell of the angels. That maybe we're creatures with angels exiled in our souls, banished to this godawful existence, howling in despair...and all those beautiful dreams we have are only the ravings of those angels, their screams in our animal minds.

Don't despair for story's future or turn curmudgeonly over the rise of video games or reality TV. The way we experience story will evolve, but as storytelling animals, we will no more give it up than start walking on all fours.

Lee did not enjoy frustration. The limitations of his desires were like the bars of a cage, like a chain and collar, something that he had learned as an animal learns, through days and years of experiencing the snub of the chain, the unyielding bars. He had never resigned himself, and his eyes looked out through invisible bars, watchful, alert, waiting for the keeper to forget the door, for the frayed collar, the loosened bar...suffering without despair and without consent.

Valuable and ingenious he might be, thought Jack, fixing him with his glass, but false he was too, and perjured. He had voluntarily sworn to have no truck with vampires, and here, attached to his bosom, spread over it and enfolded by one arm, was a greenish hairy thing, like a mat - a loathsome great vampire of the most poisonous kind, no doubt. ‘I should never have believed it of him: his sacred oath in the morning watch and now he stuffs the ship with vampires; and God knows what is in that bag. No doubt he was tempted, but surely he might blush for his fall?’ No blush; nothing but a look of idiot delight as he came slowly up the side, hampered by his burden and comforting it in Portuguese as he came. ‘I am happy to see that you were so successful, Dr Maturin,’ he said, looking down into the launch and the canoes, loaded with glowing heaps of oranges and shaddocks, red meat, iguanas, bananas, greenstuff. ‘But I am afraid no vampires can be allowed on board.’ ‘This is a sloth,’ said Stephen, smiling at him. ‘A three-toed sloth, the most affectionate, discriminating sloth you can imagine!’ The sloth turned its round head, fixed its eyes on Jack, uttered a despairing wail, and buried its face again in Stephen’s shoulder, tightening its grip to the strangling-point.

We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsible within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone. (pg. 134, The Body and the Earth)

If I could, I would choose every day another form, plant or animal, I would be all the flowers one by one: weed, thistle or rose; a tropical tree with a tangle of branches, seaweed cast by the shore, or mountain whipped by winds; bird of prey, a croaking bird, or a bird with a melodious song; beast of the forest or tame animal. Let me live the life of every species , wildly and un-self-consciously, let me try out the entire spectrum of nature, let me change gracefully, discreetly, as if it were the most natural procedure.

Of all the animals,” she said, “only man can feel a despair that is beyond his power to endure.

Since the basic cause of man’s anxiety is the possibility of being either a saint or a sinner, it follows that there are only two alternatives for him. Man can either mount upward to the peak of eternity or else slip backwards to the chasms of despair and frustration. Yet there are many who think there is yet another alternative, namely, that of indifference. They think that, just as bears hibernate for a season in a state of suspended animation, so they, too, can sleep through life without choosing to live for God or against Him. But hibernation is no escape; winter ends, and one is then forced to make a decision—indeed, the very choice of indifference is itself a decision. White fences do not remain white fences by having nothing done to them; they soon become black fences. Since there is a tendency in us that pulls us back to the animal, the mere fact that we do not resist it operates to our own destruction. Just as life is the sum of forces that resist death, so, too, man’s will must be the sum of the forces that resist frustration. A man who has taken poison into his system can ignore the antidote, or he can throw it out the window; it makes no difference which he does, for death is already on the march. St. Paul warns us, “How shall we escape it we neglect so great a salvation” (Heb 2:3). By the mere fact that we do not go forward, we go backward. There are no plains in the spiritual life, we are either going uphill or coming down. Furthermore the pose of indifference is only intellectual. The will must choose. And even though an “indifferent” soul does not positively reject the infinite, the infinite rejects it. The talents that are unused are taken away, and the Scriptures tell us that, “But because though art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).

My past was nothing, my future was nothing, and I was nothing other than a quivering pile of useless flesh. He animated my corpse, cleansed my soul, and offered me forgiveness when I hadn’t yet apologized. He took and took and took as he slid himself deeper and deeper into my body, penetrating my soul. When he finally left me, spent and waning, he’d taken away all of my hurt and despair and had replaced it with a longing to please and serve, love and worship, fuck and suck, cook and clean, whatever he wanted, I craved to be. This man was now so deeply inside me I had no idea where he ended and I began, and I knew this transformation was for eternity. I was finally complete. ~Payne Hawthorne

It is true, I suppose, that nobody finds it exactly pleasant to be criticized or shouted at, but I see in the face of the human being raging at me a wild animal in its true colors, one more horrible than any lion, crocodile or dragon. People normally seem to be hiding this true nature, but an occasion will arise (as when an ox sedately ensconced in a grassy meadow suddenly lashes out with its tail to kill the horsefly on its flank) when anger makes them reveal in a flash human nature in all its horror. Seeing this happen has always induced in me a fear great enough to make my hair stand on end, and at the thought that this nature might be one of the prerequisites for survival as a human being, I have come close to despairing of myself.

We are meaning-seeking creatures and, unlike other animals, fall very easily into despair if we fail to make sense of our lives. We find the prospect of our inevitable extinction hard to bear. We are troubled by natural disasters and human cruelty and are acutely aware of our

Immersion in the ugliness of injustice, in the hope of change, seems preferable to turning away. . . . there is a reward for courage and determination in the face of helplessness and suffering: Walking into pain in the hope of bringing change moves a person from helplessness and despair to empowered activism

Right and wrong are superstitions; your desires, however, are real. Those who cannot achieve their desires, or who despair of doing so, often compensate by constructing imaginary frameworks. For example, if you wish to live in a world in which no one exploits animals, it is moralism to judge those who eat meat immoral instead of setting about disabling the animal exploitation industry. People retreat into moralism as a sort of consolation prize, for it is easier to rule in the realm of good and evil, fictitious as it may be, than to come to terms with our limited leverage upon this world and yet persist in endeavoring to change it.

I have always believed there is a comfort to be found in despair: namely, from the knowledge that, like a pendulum at its extreme, one is simply gathering momentum for the reversal, the plunge back toward a mood of possiblity. If happiness can be tempered by the knowledge that it won't last, then surely the opposite is also true.

There may be a word in another language for what brought me to this place; to describe my particular kind of despair at that time. But I've never heard a word to express what I felt and what my body knew, which was that I had a need, an animal need, to find a place I had never been but which was still, in some undeniable way, my home.

Holly helped hoist me into the saddle, then mounted her own horse, a silvery animal that took the lead as we jogged across the traffic of Central Park West and entered a riding path dappled with leaves denuding breezes danced about. 'See?' she shouted. 'It's great!' And suddenly it was. Suddenly, watching the tangled colors of Holly's hair flash in the red-yellow leaf light, I loved her enough to forget myself, my self-pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.

She returned to numbness and despair. Life as it really was. A shrinking world of waiting terrors followed by nameless oblivion. The animate life of the Palms left her encumbered with the fact that she’d have to return to the crack house in the morning. Everything gnarled and black in her heart. Clara turned down seventh street. She heard the sounds of Joe snorting a bump of meth and the terrible rattling tick from deep in the car’s engine. She hoped for a message or warning in the tableau but was left wanting, as always.

Such an animal will swing indecisively from one worry to the next, giving a nip at each fear in turn, displaying the fickleness of despair.

Căci dacă diferența dintre om și animal rezidă în faptul că animalul nu poate fi decât animal, pe când omul poate fi neom, adică altceva decât el însuși - atunci eu sunt un neom.

Maybe any entity significantly smarter than a human being would be crippled by existential despair.

Humans cannot save the world, but this is no reason for despair. It does not need saving. Happily, humans will never live in a world of their own making.

Since Solace was published thirty-six years ago, everything and nothing has changed. Ecosystems are crashing. Terrorism sprouts and vanishes with devastating effect. Coronavirus is on a rampage, reminding us that the roulette wheel still spins. As the pandemic spreads, animals wander through empty cities as if to say that we humans have been in the way all this time. Finally, the sharp lessons of impermanence I learned while writing Solace still hold true: that loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness, and despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

Chris loved to look at every type of plant, animal, and bug he hadn’t seen before on the trail and point out those he did recognize. He enjoyed walking along small streams, listening to the water as it traveled, and searching for eddies where we could watch the minnows scurry amongst the rocks. On one Shenandoah trip, while we were resting at a waterfall, eating our chocolate-covered granola bars and watching the water pummel the rocks below, he said, “See, Carine ? That’s the purity of nature. It may be harsh in its honesty, but it never lies to you”. Chris seemed to be most comfortable outdoors, and the farther away from the typical surroundings and pace of our everyday lives the better. While it was unusual for a solid week to pass without my parents having an argument that sent them into a negative tailspin of destruction and despair, they never got into a fight of any consequence when we were on an extended family hike or camping trip. It seemed like everything became centered and peaceful when there was no choice but to make nature the focus. Our parents’ attention went to watching for blaze marks on trees ; staying on the correct trail ; doling out bug spray, granola bars, sandwiches, and candy bars at proper intervals ; and finding the best place to pitch the tent before nightfall. They taught us how to properly lace up our hiking boots and wear the righ socks to keep our feet healthy and reliable. They showed us which leaves were safe to use as toilet paper and which would surely make us miserable downtrail. We learned how to purify water for our canteens if we hadn’t found a safe spring and to be smart about conserving what clean water we had left. At night we would collect rocks to make a fire ring, dry wood to burn, and long twigs for roasting marshmallows for the s’more fixings Mom always carried in her pack. Dad would sing silly, non-sensical songs that made us laugh and tell us about the stars.

What finally turned me back toward the older traditions of my own [Chickasaw] and other Native peoples was the inhumanity of the Western world, the places--both inside and out--where the culture's knowledge and language don't go, and the despair, even desperation, it has spawned. We live, I see now, by different stories, the Western mind and the indigenous. In the older, more mature cultures where people still live within the kinship circles of animals and human beings there is a connection with animals, not only as food, but as 'powers,' a word which can be taken to mean states of being, gifts, or capabilities. I've found, too, that the ancient intellectual traditions are not merely about belief, as some would say. Belief is not a strong enough word. They are more than that: They are part of lived experience, the on-going experience of people rooted in centuries-old knowledge that is held deep and strong, knowledge about the natural laws of Earth, from the beginning of creation, and the magnificent terrestrial intelligence still at work, an intelligence now newly called ecology by the Western science that tells us what our oldest tribal stories maintain--the human animal is a relatively new creation here; animal and plant presences were here before us; and we are truly the younger sisters and brothers of the other animal species, not quite as well developed as we thought we were. It is through our relationships with animals and plants that we maintain a way of living, a cultural ethics shaped from an ancient understanding of the world, and this is remembered in stories that are the deepest reflections of our shared lives on Earth. That we held, and still hold, treaties with the animals and plant species is a known part of tribal culture. The relationship between human people and animals is still alive and resonant in the world, the ancient tellings carried on by a constellation of stories, songs, and ceremonies, all shaped by lived knowledge of the world and its many interwoven, unending relationships. These stories and ceremonies keep open the bridge between one kind of intelligence and another, one species and another. (from her essay "First People")

Pentru om, viața nu e un absolut. De aceea, niciun om, întrucât nu e numai animal, nu găsește o mulțumire în faptul însuși al vieții, în faptul de a trăi. Pentru animal, viața e totul; pentru om, ea este un semn de întrebare.

She was surprised into looking into the Beast's face. The contrasts she found there were too great: wisdom and despair, power and weakness, man and animal. These made him far more terrible than any hungry lion, any half-tamed hydra, any angry sorcerer, terrible as something that should not exist is terrible, because to recognise that it does exist shakes that faith in the foundations of the natural world which human beings must have to bear the burden of their rationality.

One of Aggie, mum & I's favourite poems, it turns out. / You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

…It was this white garment of mourning which he still wore, the white mourning of surgical gowns so much more significant than black, since white is the colour of obliteration whereas black, far from being the colour of emptiness and nothingness, is much more the active shade which makes the deep and therefore dark substance of all things stand out, from the flight of despair whose magical blackness animates the blank parchment of the soul, to the supposedly sinister flight of the raven, whose croakings and cadaverous meals are but the joyful signs of physical metamorphoses, black as congelead blood or charred wood, but much less lugubrious than the deathly restfulness of white. Yet this desert whiteness did not rule out all subsequent possibilities, when it too would coagulate to form directions in blood and when it too would know the three congruences of putrefaction.

Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time! Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

When Toad found himself immured in a dank and noisome dungeon, and knew that all the grim darkness of a medieval fortress lay between him and the outer world of sunshine and well-metalled high roads where he had lately been so happy, disporting himself as if he had bought up every road in England, he flung himself at full length on the floor, and shed bitter tears, and abandoned himself to dark despair. 'This is the end of everything' (he said), 'at least it is the end of the career of Toad, which is the same thing; the popular and handsome Toad, the rich and hospitable Toad, the Toad so free and careless and debonair! How can I hope to be ever set at large again' (he said), 'who have been imprisoned so justly for stealing so handsome a motor-car in such an audacious manner, and for such lurid and imaginative cheek, bestowed upon such a number of fat, red-faced policemen!' (Here his sobs choked him.) 'Stupid animal that I was' (he said), 'now I must languish in this dungeon, till people who were proud to say they knew me, have forgotten the very name of Toad! O wise old Badger!' (he said), 'O clever, intelligent Rat and sensible Mole! What sound judgments, what a knowledge of men and matters you possess! O unhappy and forsaken Toad!' With lamentations such as these he passed his days and nights for several weeks, refusing his meals or intermediate light refreshments, though the grim and ancient gaoler, knowing that Toad's pockets were well lined, frequently pointed out that many comforts, and indeed luxuries, could by arrangement be sent in—at a price—from outside.

One can always satisfy oneself, I suppose; it's other people one can't satisfy. One thinks one's way of life is sound and then comes an external vision to say: you are a fake, you are nothing, you're animal and must die, and no one will know you were ever here. It's an intimation of the whole absurdity of what you are and do. It's the worst kind of despair.

I suppose animals kept in cages, and so scantily fed as to be always upon the verge of famine, await their food as I awaited a letter. Oh! — to speak the truth, and drop that tone of a false calm which long to sustain, outwears nature's endurance — I underwent in those seven weeks bitter fears and pains, strange inward trials, miserable defections of hope, intolerable encroachments of despair. This last came so near me sometimes that her breath went right through me. I used to feel it like a baleful air or sigh, penetrate deep, and make motion pause at my heart, or proceed only under unspeakable oppression. The letter — the well-beloved letter — would not come; and it was all of sweetness in life I had to look for.

I hold it perniciously false to teach that all cultural forms are equally probable and that by mere force of will an inspired individual can at any moment alter the trajectory of an entire cultural system in a direction convenient to any philosophy. Convergent and parallel trajectories far outnumber divergent trajectories in cultural evolution. Most people are conformists. History repeats itself in countless acts of individual obedience to cultural rule and pattern, and individual wills seldom prevail in matters requiring radical alterations of deeply conditioned beliefs and practices. At the same time, nothing I have written in this book supports the view that the individual is helpless before the implacable march of history or that resignation and despair are appropriate responses to the concentration of industrial managerial power. The determinism that has governed cultural evolution has never been the equivalent of the determinism that governs a closed physical system. Rather, it resembles the causal sequences that account for the evolution of plant and animal species.

Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally “feeling with.” Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort—a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance.

Whereas males of both species played the field in similar ways, a human marriage had nothing on a vampire mating. A marriage could be dissolved by a judge with a little slip of paper. A marriage could be ended in a blink if the humans got tired of each other or fell out of love. With vampires, there was no dissolving a mating. A mated pair didn't grow tired of one another, and they certainly didn't fall out of love. When two vampires mated, a link formed to tether them to one another on a level that transcended the physical plane and fused them into one on a spiritual and emotional level, which was why the loss of a mate left a male in a state of despair if it didn't kill him outright. A mating was for life and plainly demonstrated the vampire race's link to the animal kingdom.

The individual consciousness also has toxins. The hells, hungry ghost, and animal realms are in us. If we want them to appear, they can appear right away. We only need to press a button and Pandora's box will open. If we sit there and allow the negative thinking connected to past experiences to come up, we are eating the toxic matter of consciousness. Many of us sit and think, and the more we think, the more angry, upset and in despair we become.

In his famous book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes, “Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life.” He quotes Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” But then Frankl made a crucial, helpful point: It’s fruitless to try to think in the abstract about what life in general means. The meaning of one’s life is only discernible within the specific circumstances of one’s own specific life. In the concentration camp, he writes, “We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.

The English word Atonement comes from the ancient Hebrew word kaphar, which means to cover. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit and discovered their nakedness in the Garden of Eden, God sent Jesus to make coats of skins to cover them. Coats of skins don’t grow on trees. They had to be made from an animal, which meant an animal had to be killed. Perhaps that was the very first animal sacrifice. Because of that sacrifice, Adam and Eve were covered physically. In the same way, through Jesus’ sacrifice we are also covered emotionally and spiritually. When Adam and Eve left the garden, the only things they could take to remind them of Eden were the coats of skins. The one physical thing we take with us out of the temple to remind us of that heavenly place is a similar covering. The garment reminds us of our covenants, protects us, and even promotes modesty. However, it is also a powerful and personal symbol of the Atonement—a continuous reminder both night and day that because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we are covered. (I am indebted to Guinevere Woolstenhulme, a religion teacher at BYU, for insights about kaphar.) Jesus covers us (see Alma 7) when we feel worthless and inadequate. Christ referred to himself as “Alpha and Omega” (3 Nephi 9:18). Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Christ is surely the beginning and the end. Those who study statistics learn that the letter alpha is used to represent the level of significance in a research study. Jesus is also the one who gives value and significance to everything. Robert L. Millet writes, “In a world that offers flimsy and fleeting remedies for mortal despair, Jesus comes to us in our moments of need with a ‘more excellent hope’ (Ether 12:32)” (Grace Works, 62). Jesus covers us when we feel lost and discouraged. Christ referred to Himself as the “light” (3 Nephi 18:16). He doesn’t always clear the path, but He does illuminate it. Along with being the light, He also lightens our loads. “For my yoke is easy,” He said, “and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). He doesn’t always take burdens away from us, but He strengthens us for the task of carrying them and promises they will be for our good. Jesus covers us when we feel abused and hurt. Joseph Smith taught that because Christ met the demands of justice, all injustices will be made right for the faithful in the eternal scheme of things (see Teachings, 296). Marie K. Hafen has said, “The gospel of Jesus Christ was not given us to prevent our pain. The gospel was given us to heal our pain” (“Eve Heard All These Things,” 27). Jesus covers us when we feel defenseless and abandoned. Christ referred to Himself as our “advocate” (D&C 29:5): one who believes in us and stands up to defend us. We read, “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler” (Psalm 18:2). A buckler is a shield used to divert blows. Jesus doesn’t always protect us from unpleasant consequences of illness or the choices of others, since they are all part of what we are here on earth to experience. However, He does shield us from fear in those dark times and delivers us from having to face those difficulties alone. … We’ve already learned that the Hebrew word that is translated into English as Atonement means “to cover.” In Arabic or Aramaic, the verb meaning to atone is kafat, which means “to embrace.” Not only can we be covered, helped, and comforted by the Savior, but we can be “encircled about eternally in the arms of his love” (2 Nephi 1:15). We can be “clasped in the arms of Jesus” (Mormon 5:11). In our day the Savior has said, “Be faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, and I will encircle thee in the arms of my love” (D&C 6:20). (Brad Wilcox, The Continuous Atonement, pp. 47-49, 60).

It was a dead hole, smelling of synthetic leather and disinfectant, both of which odors seemed to emanate from the torn scratched material of the seats that lined the three walls. It smelled of the tobacco ashes which had flooded the two standing metal ashtrays. On the chromium lip of one, a cigar butt gleamed wetly like a chewed piece of beef. There was the smell of peanut shells and of the waxy candy wrappers that littered the floor, the smell of old newspapers, dry, inky, smothering and faintly like a urinal, the smell of sweat from armpits and groins and backs and faces, pouring out and drying up in the lifeless air, the smell of clothes—cleaning fluids imbedded in fabric and blooming horribly in the warm sweetish air, picking at the nostrils like thorns—all the exudations of the human flesh, a bouquet of animal being, flowing out, drying up, but leaving a peculiar and ineradicable odor of despair in the room as though chemistry was transformed into spirit, an ascension of a kind, …Light issuing from spotlights in the ceiling was sour and blinding like a sick breath. There was in that room an underlying confusion in the function of the senses. Smell became color, color became smell. Mute started at mute so intently they might have been listening with their eyes, and hearing grew preternaturally acute, yet waited only for the familiar syllables of surnames. Taste died, mouth opened in the negative drowsiness of waiting.

It said that the major activities pursued on NowWhat were those of catching, skinning, and eating of the NowWhattian boghogs, which were the only extant form of animal life on NowWhat, all other having died long ago of despair. The boghogs were tiny, vicious creatures, and the small margin by which they fell short of being completely inedible was the margin by which life on the planet subsisted. So what were the rewards, however small, that made life on NowWhat worth living? Well, there weren’t any. Not a one. Even making yourself some protective clothing out of boghog skins was an exercise in disappointment and futility, since the skins were unaccountably thin and leaky. This caused a lot of puzzled conjecture amongst the settlers. What was the boghog’s secret of keeping warm? If anyone had ever learnt the language the boghogs spoke to each other they would have realized that there was no trick. The boghogs were as cold and wet as anyone else on the planet.

These were strange, freakish, and dangerous creatures, the likes of which might well have brought Darwin himself to despair with their obvious lack of conformity to the laws of evolutionary development. As much as these beasts might differ from the animals humans were used to, and whether they had been reborn under the invisible and ruinous rays of sunlight, turned from inoffensive representatives of urban fauna into the spawn of hell, or whether they had always dwelled in the depths, only now to be disturbed by man – still, they were an evident part of life on earth.

He would like either to overcome the wolf and become wholly man or to renounce mankind and at last to live wholly a wolf's life. It may be presumed that he has never carefully watched a real wolf. Had he done so he would have seen, perhaps, that even animals are not undivided in spirit. With them, too, the well-knit beauty of the body hides a being of manifold states and strivings. The wolf, too, has his abysses. The wolf, too, suffers. No, back to nature is a false track that leads nowhere but to suffering and despair. Harry can never turn back again and become wholly wolf, and could he do so he would find that even the wolf is not of primeval simplicity, but already a creature of manifold complexity. Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in his wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as the man who sings: "If I could be a child once more!" He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering.

As a drop in the ocean you take part in the current, ebb and flow. You swell slowly on the land and slowly sink back again in interminably slow breaths. You wander vast distances in blurred currents and wash up on strange shores, not knowing how you got there. You mount the billows of huge storms and are swept back again into the depths. And you do not know how this happens to you. You had thought that your movement came from you and that it needed your decisions and efforts, so that you could get going and make progress. But with every conceivable effort you would never have achieved that movement and reached those areas to which the sea and the great wind of the world brought you. From endless blue plains you sink into black depths; luminous fish draw you, marvellous branches twine around you from above. You slip through columns and twisting, wavering, dark-leaved plants, and the sea takes you up again in bright green water to white, sandy coasts, and a wave foams you ashore and swallows you back again, and a wide smooth swell lifts you softly and leads you again to new regions, to twisting plants, to slowly creeping slimy polyps, and to green water and white sand and breaking surf. But from far off your heights shine to you above the sea in a golden light, like the moon emerging from the tide, and you become aware of yourself from afar. And longing seizes you and the will for your own movement. You want to cross over from being to becoming, since you have recognized the breath of the sea, and its flowing, that leads you here and there without your ever adhering; you have also recognized its surge that bears you to alien shores and carries you back, and gargles you up and down. You saw that was the life of the whole and the death of each individual. You felt yourself entwined in the collective death, from death to the earth’s deepest place, from death in your own strangely breathing depths. Oh – you long to be beyond; despair and mortal fear seize you in this death that breathes slowly and streams back and forth eternally. All this light and dark, warm, tepid, and cold water, all these wavy, swaying, twisting plantlike animals and bestial plants, all these nightly wonders become a horror to you, and you long for the sun, for light dry air, for firm stones, for a fixed place and straight lines, for the motionless and firmly held, for rules and preconceived purpose, for singleness and your own intent.

Blind Heart’s. In the circle of life, a sorrowful tale, Where death and life dance an endless wail. Hungry eyes search for morsels to devour, Survival's cruel game with each passing hour. Angst and fear grip hearts, cold and bleak, Aching souls yearning for solace they seek. In a world that lacks fairness, unjust and unkind, Tears fall like rain, leaving scars behind. Hatred and love, a twisted embrace, In this nature of existence, a bitter chase. For when darkness looms, Love hides in despair, Yet hate finds its mark, leaving hearts threadbare. We, people who turn blind eyes to the cries, As if suffering and anguish were mere lies. Ignoring the plight that surrounds us all, Humanity's downfall, a deafening fall. But what of the animals, creatures so dear? Caught in this cycle, their voices unclear. Silently they suffer, their pain left unheard, In nature's cruel script, an unspoken word. Children on ground, black and white Dying, Drying while survival trying. Scars defining not body, but soul Oh light, forgive us Lord. The circle spins on, in sorrow it turns, A tragic symphony, where hope rarely burns. In this poem of life, where sadness takes hold, Let us open our eyes, let compassion unfold.

No...I knew a Martin. And was he wiley? If there was one thing he wasn't was wiley, John. Oh? Poor Martin was an inordinately stupid man. He could barely tie his shoelaces. A ha'penny short? Ah listen. Martin kept animals had more wile in them. What kind of animals? He'd sheep. A few cattle, I suppose. Though they'd have been wind-bothered up that way. They'd have been... Bothered, John. By the wind coming in. The way it would unseat cattle. Unseat them? Cornelius lowers his sad eyes - In the mind. You mean you'd have a cow'd take a turn? Cornelius squares his jaw. Do you realise you're looking at a man who's seen a cow step in front of a moving vehicle? Purposefully. On account of? Wind coming easterly. That's the kind of thing that can leave a beast beyond despair. Because of the pure evil sound of it, John. The way it would play across the country in an ominous way. An easterly? If it was to come across you for a fortnight and it might? Sleep gone out the window and a horrible black feeling racing through your fucken blood. Day and night. All sorts of thoughts of death and hopelessness. This is what you'd get on the tail end of an easterly wind. Man nor animal wouldn't be right after it.

Which is what love will do to a person. Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it. When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them. And who knows what might happen to you then?

This Steppenwolf of ours has always been aware of at least the Faustian two-fold nature within him. He has discovered that the one-fold of the body is not inhabited by a one-fold of the soul, and that at best he is only at the beginning of a long pilgrimage towards this ideal harmony. He would like either to overcome the wolf and become wholly man or to renounce mankind and at last to live wholly a wolf's life. It may be presumed that he has never carefully watched a real wolf. Had he done so he would have seen, perhaps, that even animals are not undivided in spirit. With them, too, the well-knit beauty of the body hides a being of manifold states and strivings. The wolf, too, has his abysses. The wolf, too, suffers. No, back to nature is a false track that leads nowhere but to suffering and despair. Harry can never turn back again and become wholly wolf, and could he do so he would find that even the wolf is not of primeval simplicity, but already a creature of manifold complexity. Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in his wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as the man who sings: "If I could be a child once more!" He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering. There is, in fact, no way back either to the wolf or to the child. From the very start there is no innocence and no singleness. Every created thing, even the simplest, is already guilty, already multiple. It has been thrown into the muddy stream of being and may never more swim back again to its source. The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life. Nor will suicide really solve your problem, unhappy Steppenwolf. You will, instead, embark on the longer and wearier and harder road of life. You will have to multiply many times your two-fold being and complicate your complexities still further. 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. This is the road that Buddha and every great man has gone, whether consciously or not, insofar as fortune favored his quest. All births mean separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All.

Apart from this ultimate hope, the created world would be a dungeon of despair for God’s children. But faith animates our lives with an eschatological anticipation of the presence and glory of Christ. We will not find our full and permanent happiness here. Nor will we find Christian joy automatically, like a daily newspaper at the door. God intends for us to find joy kinetically, in action, as we work out our faith with fear and trembling, as we fight the good fight of faith, as we worship, fellowship, and engage in all the various dynamics of the Christian life together.62 But even in this, our hope of eternal joy sobers our expectations for the joy we can expect to experience in this life.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— over and over announcing your place in the family of things. Mary Oliver,

Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Only last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay—within the walls playing with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more Elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady to say a word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate—only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits. She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies behind—her Ariel has put a girdle of it round the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped—but the imperfect remedy is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced. Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain—two dark square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it aslant, like the angels in Jacob's dream!

Much as I wanted to think of Lark in someplace better, I knew from a thousand conversations that she never worried abut that place. Maybe it was real and full of saints and poets, or maybe it was poetry itself. Her concern was this place. This animal world with its unfurling dread and convulsive wars and fabricated certainties, and its breathtaking storms across the water. With Willow infiltrating the landscape and its stories coming thick and fast - these explorers getting younger and more innocent - I felt desperate to reach through time. I wanted to find these kids in a moment of calm. To take their lapels gently in my hands and say, "Better is right here." I still hear it in Lark's voice. Better is here. Stay, and make it better.

That accounts for his crying so. Poor creature!” ”Well--you must do the sticking--there's no help for it. I'll showyou how. Or I'll do it myself--I think I could. Though as it issuch a big pig I had rather Challow had done it. However, his basketo' knives and things have been already sent on here, and we can use'em.” ”Of course you shan't do it,” said Jude. ”I'll do it, since it mustbe done.” He went out to the sty, shovelled away the snow for the space of acouple of yards or more, and placed the stool in front, with theknives and ropes at hand. A robin peered down at the preparationsfrom the nearest tree, and, not liking the sinister look of thescene, flew away, though hungry. By this time Arabella had joinedher husband, and Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed theaffrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose torepeated cries of rage. Arabella opened the sty-door, and togetherthey hoisted the victim on to the stool, legs upward, and while Judeheld him Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs tokeep him from struggling. The animal's note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but thecry of despair; long-drawn, slow and hopeless. ”Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have hadthis to do!” said Jude. ”A creature I have fed with my own hands.” ”Don't be such a tender-hearted fool! There's the sticking-knife--the one with the point. Now whatever you do, don't stick un toodeep.” ”I'll stick him effectually, so as to make short work of it. That'sthe chief thing.” ”You must not!” she cried. ”The meat must be well bled, and to dothat he must die slow. We shall lose a shilling a score if the meatis red and bloody! Just touch the vein, that's all. I was broughtup to it, and I know. Every good butcher keeps un bleeding long.He ought to be eight or ten minutes dying, at least.” ”He shall not be half a minute if I can help it, however the meat maylook,” said Jude determinedly. Scraping the bristles from the pig'supturned throat, as he had seen the butchers do, he slit the fat;then plunged in the knife with all his might. ”'Od damn it all!” she cried, ”that ever I should say it! You'veover-stuck un! And I telling you all the time--” ”Do be quiet, Arabella, and have a little pity on the creature!

But why . . . you've said Lestat shouldn't have made you start with people. Did you mean . . . do you mean for you it was an aesthetic choice, not a moral one?’ ’Had you asked me then, I would have told you it was aesthetic, that I wished to understand death in stages. That the death of an animal yielded such pleasure and experience to me that I had only begun to understand it, and wished to save the experience of human death for my mature understanding. But it was moral. Because all aesthetic decisions are moral, really.’ ‘I don’t understand,’ said the boy. ‘I thought aesthetic decisions could be completely immoral. What about the cliché of the artist who leaves his wife and children so he can paint? Or Nero playing the harp while Rome burned?’ ‘Both were moral decisions. Both served a higher good, in the mind of the artist. The conflict lies between the morals of the artist and the morals of society, not between aesthetics and morality. But often this isn’t understood; and here comes the waste, the tragedy. An artist, stealing paints from a store, for example, imagines himself to have made an inevitable but immoral decision, and then he sees himself as fallen from grace; what follows is despair and petty irresponsibility, as if morality were a great glass world which can be utterly shattered by one act. But this was not my great concern then. I did not know these things then. I believed I killed animals for aesthetic reasons only, and I hedged against the great moral question of whether or not by my very nature I was damned.

On occasion, these periods of total despair would be made even worse by terrible agitation. My mind would race from subject to subject, but instead of being filled with the exuberant and cosmic thoughts that had been associated with earlier periods of rapid thinking, it would be drenched in awful sounds and images of decay and dying: dead bodies on the beach, charred remains of animals, toe-tagged corpses in morgues. During these agitated periods I became exceedingly restless, angry, and irritable, and the only way I could dilute the agitation was to run along the beach or pace back and forth across my room like a polar bear at the zoo. I had no idea what was going on, and I felt totally unable to ask anyone for help. It never occurred to me that I was ill; my brain just didn’t put it in those terms.

All three dolphins were magnificent, absolute marvels of the ocean, and by all rights they should have been out in the Pacific, doing what 55 million years of evolution had designed them to do in the most important ecosystem on earth, instead of in here, leaping to the beat of cheesy pop songs. As I watched, sweat trickled down the back of my neck but something else was rising: anger. The show was soul-crushingly stupid. It was plainly and inanely stupid- all of this was stupid, everything that went on at the cove, the entire arrogant, selfish relationship we had with these animals and with all of nature, as though every bit of life existed only for our purposes. We behaved as though we were gods, deciding the fate of everything, but we weren't. We were just dumb. I felt a wave of despair wash over me.

Another reason we resist bearing witness to the truth of carnism is that witnessing hurts. Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally “feeling with.” Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort—a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance. A

When other birds are still, the screech owls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian.( Wise midnight hags! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me sometimes of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then — that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the farther side with tremulous sincerity, and — bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from far in the Lincoln woods. I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand you could fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, as if she meant by this to stereotype and make permanent in her choir the dying moans of a human being — some poor weak relic of mortality who has left hope behind, and howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, on entering the dark valley, made more awful by a certain gurgling melodiousness — I find myself beginning with the letters gl when I try to imitate it — expressive of a mind which has reached the gelatinous, mildewy stage in the mortification of all healthy and courageous thought. It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and insane howlings. But now one answers from far woods in a strain made really melodious by distance — Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo; and indeed for the most part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether heard by day or night, summer or winter. I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the double spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.

Humans recognize the duality, autonomy, and latitude range of the mind and the body, and all humans comprehend their impending mortality. Unlike other animals, humankind knows despair brought about by understanding the inevitability of death of all living creatures. The radius of human thought touching upon the longitude of our transient existence causes infinite pain. Seeking to ameliorate existential anguish incites us to ponder spiritual matters, and this sphere of mental activity spurs us to contemplate the perimeter of unknown frontiers. Our ability to understand the compass of life and death allows us to view the circumference of the world as consisting of a past, a present, and a future in relation to our own lives. How a person views the range of their earthly life and how a person rationalizes their march towards a deathly outback creates a system of beliefs that separate people into classes, and the variations amongst class members’ belief systems supplements who we think we are.

The tunnel of winter had settled over our lives, ushered in by that great official Hoodwink, the end of daylight saving time. Personally I would vote for one more hour of light on winter evenings instead of the sudden, extra-early blackout. Whose idea was it to jilt us this way, leaving us in cold November with our unsaved remnants of daylight petering out before the workday ends? In my childhood, as early as that, I remember observing the same despair every autumn: the feeling that sunshine, summertime, and probably life itself had passed me by before I'd even finished a halfway decent tree fort. But mine is not to question those who command the springing forward and the falling back. I only vow each winter to try harder to live like a potato, with its tacit understanding that time is time, no matter what any clock might say. I get through the hibernation months by hovering as close as possible to the woodstove without actual self-immolation, and catching up on my reading, cheered at regular intervals by the excess of holidays that collect in a festive logjam at the outflow end of our calendar.

From the bottom of her heart, from the bottom of her soul, she despised and detested people, adult people. She loved only children and animals: children she loved passionately, but coldly. They made her want to hug them, to protect them, to give them life. But this very love, based on pity and despair, was only a bondage and a pain to her. She loved best of all the animals, that were single and unsocial as she herself was. She loved the horses and cows in the field. Each was single and to itself, magical. It was not referred away to some detestable social principle. It was incapable of soulfulness and tragedy, which she detested so profoundly. She could be very pleasant and flattering, almost subservient, to people she met. But no one was taken in. Instinctively each felt her contemptuous mockery of the human being in himself, or herself. She had a profound grudge against the human being. That which the word 'human' stood for was despicable and repugnant to her. Mostly her heart was closed in this hidden, unconscious strain of contemptuous ridicule. She thought she loved, she thought she was full of love. This was her idea of herself.

First, we must boldly handle the major themes of human life, the incessant questions which men and women have always asked and which the great novelists and dramatists have treated in every age: What is the purpose of our existence? Has life any significance? Where did I come from, and where am I going to? What does it mean to be a human being, and how do humans differ from animals? Whence this thirst for transcendence, this universal quest for a Reality above and beyond us, this need to fall down and worship the Infinitely Great? What is freedom, and how can I experience personal liberation? Why the painful tension between what I am and what I long to be? Is there a way to be rid of guilt and of a guilty conscience? What about the hunger for love, sexual fulfillment, marriage, family life, and community on the one hand, and on the other the pervasive sense of alienation, and the base, destructive passions of jealousy, malice, hate, lust, and revenge? Is it possible truly to master oneself and love one’s neighbor? Is there any light on the dark mysteries of evil and suffering? How can we find courage to face first life, then death, then what may lie beyond death? What hope can sustain us in the midst of our despair?

Cruelty to animals is cruelty and a vile thing; but cruelty to a man is not cruelty, it is treason. Tyranny over a man is not tyranny, it is rebellion, for man is royal. Now, the practical weakness of the vast mass of modern pity for the poor and the oppressed is precisely that it is merely pity; the pity is pitiful, but not respectful. Men feel that the cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is injustice to equals; nay, it is treachery to comrades. This dark scientific pity, this brutal pity, has an elemental sincerity of its own; but it is entirely useless for all ends of social reform. Democracy swept Europe with the sabre when it was founded upon the Rights of Man. It has done literally nothing at all since it has been founded only upon the wrongs of man. Or, more strictly speaking, its recent failure has been due to its not admitting the existence of any rights, or wrongs, or indeed of any humanity. Evolution (the sinister enemy of revolution) does not especially deny the existence of God; what it does deny is the existence of man. And all the despair about the poor, and the cold and repugnant pity for them, has been largely due to the vague sense that they have literally relapsed into the state of the lower animals.

How to live (forty pieces of advice I feel to be helpful but which I don’t always follow) 1. Appreciate happiness when it is there 2. Sip, don’t gulp. 3. Be gentle with yourself. Work less. Sleep more. 4. There is absolutely nothing in the past that you can change. That’s basic physics. 5. Beware of Tuesdays. And Octobers. 6. Kurt Vonnegut was right. “Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found.” 7. Listen more than you talk. 8. Don’t feel guilty about being idle. More harm is probably done to the world through work than idleness. But perfect your idleness. Make it mindful. 9. Be aware that you are breathing. 10. Wherever you are, at any moment, try to find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind. 11. Hate is a pointless emotion to have inside you. It is like eating a scorpion to punish it for stinging you. 12. Go for a run. Then do some yoga. 13. Shower before noon. 14. Look at the sky. Remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity, in order to see the smallness of yourself. 15. Be kind. 16. Understand that thoughts are thoughts. If they are unreasonable, reason with them, even if you have no reason left. You are the observer of your mind, not its victim. 17. Do not watch TV aimlessly. Do not go on social media aimlessly. Always be aware of what you are doing and why you are doing it. Don’t value TV less. Value it more. Then you will watch it less. Unchecked distractions will lead you to distraction. 18. Sit down. Lie down. Be still. Do nothing. Observe. Listen to your mind. Let it do what it does without judging it. Let it go, like Snow Queen in Frozen. 19. Don’t’ worry about things that probably won’t happen. 20. Look at trees. Be near trees. Plant trees. (Trees are great.) 21. Listen to that yoga instructor on YouTube, and “walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet”. 22. Live. Love. Let go. The three Ls. 23. Alcohol maths. Wine multiplies itself by itself. The more you have, the more you are likely to have. And if it is hard to stop at one glass, it will be impossible at three. Addition is multiplication. 24. Beware of the gap. The gap between where you are and where you want to be. Simply thinking of the gap widens it. And you end up falling through. 25. Read a book without thinking about finishing it. Just read it. Enjoy every word, sentence, and paragraph. Don’t wish for it to end, or for it to never end. 26. No drug in the universe will make you feel better, at the deepest level, than being kind to other people. 27. Listen to what Hamlet – literature’s most famous depressive – told Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” 28. If someone loves you, let them. Believe in that love. Live for them, even when you feel there is no point. 29. You don’t need the world to understand you. It’s fine. Some people will never really understand things they haven’t experienced. Some will. Be grateful. 30. Jules Verne wrote of the “Living Infinite”. This is the world of love and emotion that is like a “sea”. If we can submerge ourselves in it, we find infinity in ourselves, and the space we need to survive. 31. Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life. 32. Remember that there is nothing weird about you. You are just a human, and everything you do and feel is a natural thing, because we are natural animals. You are nature. You are a hominid ape. You are in the world and the world is in you. Everything connects. 33. Don’t believe in good or bad, or winning and losing, or victory and defeat, or ups and down. At your lowest and your highest, whether you are happy or despairing or calm or angry, there is a kernel of you that stays the same. That is the you that matters.

Deşi în genere omul este un animal bolnav, se găsesc totuşi destui oameni sănătoşi pentru a putea vorbi de sensul sănătăţii în omenire. Cea mai comodă, mai confortabilă şi mai puţin angajată stare este starea de sănătate. Ea indică nu numai o prostie organică şi definitivă, dar şi o platitudine de simţire, o absenţă totală a oricărui risc, o incapacitate de orice acţiune eroică. A fi sănătos înseamnă a umbla în lumea aceasta legat la ochi, a nu sesiza nimic din culmile sau adîncimile existenţei. Se poate lupta împotriva tuturor oamenilor, numai împotriva celor sănătoşi nu, fiindcă aceştia sînt atît de puţin sensibili, încît nu pot să realizeze în ei nici o formă de transfigurare. Cel mai mare dispreţ pe care îl pot avea pentru un om este să-l consider sănătos. Sănătatea brută, organică — adică o sănătate iremediabilă — este tot ceea ce poate fi mai detestabil la un om. Şi cînd mi se va obiecta sănătatea din graţie sau entuziasm, voi răspunde că acestea preced oarecum sănătatea, că ele reprezintă două modalităţi de vieţuire care determină felul sănătăţii. Ele sublimează în aşa măsură faptul organic, încît atunci cînd admirăm graţia sau entuziasmul noi nu sîntem sensibili şi nu avem în conştiinţă sănătatea, această expresie a organicului ce nu şi-a depăşit legea lui, depăşire ce o întîlnim totdeauna în boală.

Since my biographer may be too staid Or know too little to affirm that Shade Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support Running across the tub to hold in place The shaving mirror right before his face And with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'd Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed." The more I weigh, the less secure my skin; In places it's ridiculously thin; Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick And my grimace, invited the wicked nick. Or this dewlap: some day I must set free The Newport Frill inveterate in me. My Adam's apple is a prickly pear: Now I shall speak of evil and despair As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight, Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate Through strawberry-and-cream the gory mess And find unchanged that patch of prickliness. I have my doubts about the one-armed bloke Who in commercials with one gliding stroke Clears a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin, Then wipes his faces and fondly tries his skin. I'm in the class of fussy bimanists. As a discreet ephebe in tights assists A female in an acrobatic dance, My left hand help, and holds, and shifts its stance. Now I shall speak...Better than any soap Is the sensation for which poets hope When inspiration and its icy blaze, The sudden image, the immediate phrase Over the skin a triple ripple send Making the little hairs all stand on end As in the enlarged animated scheme Of whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream.

The God of monotheism did not die, it only left the scene for a while in order to reappear as humanity—the human species dressed up as a collective agent, pursuing its self-realization in history. But, like the God of monotheism, humanity is a work of the imagination. The only observable reality is the multitudinous human animal, with its conflicting goals, values and ways of life. As an object of worship, this fractious species has some disadvantages. Old-fashioned monotheism had the merit of admitting that very little can be known of God. As far back as the prophet Isaiah, the faithful have allowed that the Deity may have withdrawn from the world. Awaiting some sign of a divine presence, they have encountered only deus absconditus—an absent God. The end result of trying to abolish monotheism is much the same. Generations of atheists have lived in expectation of the arrival of a truly human species: the communal workers of Marx, Mill’s autonomous individuals and Nietzsche’s absurd Übermensch, among many others. None of these fantastical creatures has been seen by human eyes. A truly human species remains as elusive as any Deity. Humanity is the deus absconditus of modern atheism. A free-thinking atheism would begin by questioning the prevailing faith in humanity. But there is little prospect of contemporary atheists giving up their reverence for this phantom. Without the faith that they stand at the head of an advancing species they could hardly go on. Only by immersing themselves in such nonsense can they make sense of their lives. Without it, they face panic and despair. According to the grandiose theories today’s atheists have inherited from Positivism, religion will wither away as science continues its advance. But while science is advancing more quickly than it has ever done, religion is thriving—at times violently. Secular believers say this is a blip—eventually, religion will decline and die away. But their angry bafflement at the re-emergence of traditional faiths shows they do not believe in their theories themselves. For them religion is as inexplicable as original sin. Atheists who demonize religion face a problem of evil as insoluble as that which faces Christianity. If you want to understand atheism and religion, you must forget the popular notion that they are opposites. If you can see what a millenarian theocracy in early sixteenth-century Münster has in common with Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany, you will have a clearer view of the modern scene. If you can see how theologies that affirm the ineffability of God and some types of atheism are not so far apart, you will learn something about the limits of human understanding. Contemporary atheism is a continuation of monotheism by other means. Hence the unending succession of God-surrogates, such as humanity and science, technology and the all-too-human visions of transhumanism. But there is no need for panic or despair. Belief and unbelief are poses the mind adopts in the face of an unimaginable reality. A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think.

Whether it honors them well or not, an essay’s fundamental obligations are supposed to be to the reader. The reader, on however unconscious a level, understands this, and thus tends to approach an essay with a relatively high level of openness and credulity. But a commercial is a very different animal. Advertisements have certain formal, legal obligations to truthfulness, but these are broad enough to allow for a great deal of rhetorical maneuvering in the fulfillment of an advertisement’s primary obligation, which is to serve the financial interests of its sponsor. Whatever attempts an advertisement makes to interest and appeal to its readers are not, finally, for the reader’s benefit. And the reader of an ad knows all this, too—that an ad’s appeal is by its very nature calculated—and this is part of why our state of receptivity is different, more guarded, when we get ready to read an ad. 38 In the case of Frank Conroy’s “essay,” Celebrity Cruises 39 is trying to position an ad in such a way that we come to it with the lowered guard and leading chin we properly reserve for coming to an essay, for something that is art (or that is at least trying to be art). An ad that pretends to be art is—at absolute best—like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what’s sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill’s real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair.

PG: Who tends to have an interest in moé characters? HT: Clearly we are talking about those who are marginalized— Japanese men in particular, who seem to be getting weaker. After the Second World War, the value of men in Japan was determined by their productivity at work. The man who earned money was able to spend it, showing that he was a worthy mate. This then became the only way to be a man, the only way to be favorably appraised by women. I call this the era of love capitalism, meaning that dating and courtship were increasingly tied to consumption. Trendy dramas aired on television that promoted going to fancy restaurants or taking a ski vacation. So those men who failed or dropped out of the system looked for love elsewhere, for example in manga and anime. The situation got worse when the economy tanked in the 1990s, which made it harder to get that job and be that ideal man. There were a few men who had love and a lot of men who didn’t. I call this the love gap (ren’ai kakusa). Moé provides a low-cost, low-stress solution to this problem. It is love on our terms. Moé is a love revolution that challenges people’s commonsense notions about the world. You don’t need much capital to access moé, and you can do it in a way that suits you. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that everyone should give up on reality; I’m just pointing out that some of us find satisfaction with fictional characters. It’s not for everyone, but maybe more people would recognize this life choice if it wasn’t always belittled. Forcing people to live up to impossible ideals so that they can participate in so-called reality creates so-called losers, who in their despair might lash out at society. We don’t have to accept something just because people tell us that it is normal or right or better.

My head snaps around at the hiss, but it takes awhile to believe he’s real. How could he have gotten here? I take in the claw marks from some wild animal, the back paw he holds slightly above the ground, the prominent bones in his face. He’s come on foot, then, all the way from 13. Maybe they kicked him out or maybe he just couldn’t stand it there without her, so he came looking. “It was the waste of a trip. She’s not here,” I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. “She’s not here. You can hiss all you like. You won’t find Prim.” At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. “Get out!” He dodges the pillow I throw at him. “Go away! There’s nothing left for you here!” I start to shake, furious with him. “She’s not coming back! She’s never ever coming back here again!” I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. “She’s dead.” I clutch my middle to dull the pain. Sink down on my heels, rocking the pillow, crying. “She’s dead, you stupid cat. She’s dead.” A new sound, part crying, part singing, comes out of my body, giving voice to my despair. Buttercup begins to wail as well. No matter what I do, he won’t go. He circles me, just out of reach, as wave after wave of sobs racks my body, until eventually I fall unconscious. But he must understand. He must know that the unthinkable has happened and to survive will require previously unthinkable acts. Because hours later, when I come to in my bed, he’s there in the moonlight. Crouched beside me, yellow eyes alert, guarding me from the night. In the morning, he sits stoically as I clean the cuts, but digging the thorn from his paw brings on a round of those kitten mews. We both end up crying again, only this time we comfort each other. On the strength of this, I open the letter Haymitch gave me from my mother, dial the phone number, and weep with her as well. Peeta, bearing a warm loaf of bread, shows up with Greasy Sae. She makes us breakfast and I feed all my bacon to Buttercup.

Sometimes we think we are not capable of doing certain things. I hear comments from my students such as, “My brain isn’t wired to do math,” or “I am not good at math.” It is true that there are people who are better at math than you, but that does not mean you can’t do it. This just means you need to put in more effort than others do. Focusing on our weaknesses may hinder our progress. We may think that we must be born with certain skills and abilities; they must be in our genes. This is not the case. Do you think Nephi could build a ship? Could the brother of Jared have caused light to come into dark barges? Do you think Noah could have built an ark that would hold two of every animal species on the earth? Do you think Moses had the power to part a sea? Actually, no. None of these men had the power to do any of these things. However, they all had something in common. They all knew how to tap into the power of someone who could—the Savior’s power. It is so important that we learn how to tap into that power. The Atonement literally means “at-one-ment,” or becoming one with God. The Savior gave us the power to become gods. He enabled us so we would be able to perform miracles through Him. But we must understand that this kind of power is not free. There is only one thing that the Savior, through His Atonement, gave us for free and that is the power to overcome death. Everything else that He offers must come “after all we can do.” [2] For example, Jesus Christ promises us eternal life, but only after we have faith in Him, obey His commandments, and endure to the end. Similarly, He gives us power to move mountains, but only after doing all we can and having trust in Him. The power to change our lives, change the world, and perform miracles is within each of us. However, we need to have enough humility to realize that, in the end, we are not the ones performing the miracles—He is. Occasionally, I have a student who does not do their homework, rarely comes to class, and then comes at the end of the semester and asks, “Sister Qumsiyeh, is there anything I can do to pass? Do you offer any extra credit?” I know some of you are smiling right now because you know you have done this to your teachers. This is what I wish I could say to the student who asks that question: “You need to invent a time machine and go back and do what you should have done this semester. You failed because you did not try your best. It is too late.” Do we all really hope to stand before the Savior at the Judgement Day and expect Him to save us without us doing our part? Do we really expect Him to allow us into the celestial kingdom and to just save us? No, that is not how the Atonement works. It does not work without us having tried our best. Of course, our best may not be enough. In fact, it hardly ever is. But if we do our best and have faith in Him, He magnifies our efforts. The brother of Jared could not make the 16 stones shine, but he spent hours preparing them and then humbly took them to the Lord and basically said, “Here is my small effort; magnify it.” This the Lord did. [3] Elder David A. Bednar said, “The power of the Atonement makes repentance possible and quells the despair caused by sin; it also strengthens us to see, do, and become good in ways that we could never recognize or accomplish with our limited mortal capacity.

The seventh day, and no wind—the burning sun Blister’d and scorch’d, and, stagnant on the sea, They lay like carcasses; and hope was none, Save in the breeze that came not; savagely They glared upon each other—all was done, Water, and wine, and food,—and you might see The longings of the cannibal arise (Although they spoke not) in their wolfish eyes. At length one whisper’d his companion, who Whisper’d another, and thus it went round, And then into a hoarser murmur grew, An ominous, and wild, and desperate sound; And when his comrade’s thought each sufferer knew, ’Twas but his own, suppress’d till now, he found: And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood, And who should die to be his fellow’s food. But ere they came to this, they that day shared Some leathern caps, and what remain’d of shoes; And then they look’d around them and despair’d, And none to be the sacrifice would choose; At length the lots were torn up, and prepared, But of materials that much shock the Muse— Having no paper, for the want of better, They took by force from Juan Julia’s letter. The lots were made, and mark’d, and mix’d, and handed, In silent horror, and their distribution Lull’d even the savage hunger which demanded, Like the Promethean vulture, this pollution; None in particular had sought or plann’d it, ’Twas nature gnaw’d them to this resolution, By which none were permitted to be neuter— And the lot fell on Juan’s luckless tutor. He but requested to be bled to death: The surgeon had his instruments, and bled Pedrillo, and so gently ebb’d his breath, You hardly could perceive when he was dead. He died as born, a Catholic in faith, Like most in the belief in which they’re bred, And first a little crucifix he kiss’d, And then held out his jugular and wrist. The surgeon, as there was no other fee, Had his first choice of morsels for his pains; But being thirstiest at the moment, he Preferr’d a draught from the fast-flowing veins: Part was divided, part thrown in the sea, And such things as the entrails and the brains Regaled two sharks, who follow’d o’er the billow The sailors ate the rest of poor Pedrillo. The sailors ate him, all save three or four, Who were not quite so fond of animal food; To these was added Juan, who, before Refusing his own spaniel, hardly could Feel now his appetite increased much more; ’Twas not to be expected that he should, Even in extremity of their disaster, Dine with them on his pastor and his master. ’Twas better that he did not; for, in fact, The consequence was awful in the extreme; For they, who were most ravenous in the act, Went raging mad—Lord! how they did blaspheme! And foam and roll, with strange convulsions rack’d, Drinking salt water like a mountain-stream, Tearing, and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing, And, with hyaena-laughter, died despairing. Their numbers were much thinn’d by this infliction, And all the rest were thin enough, Heaven knows; And some of them had lost their recollection, Happier than they who still perceived their woes; But others ponder’d on a new dissection, As if not warn’d sufficiently by those Who had already perish’d, suffering madly, For having used their appetites so sadly. And if Pedrillo’s fate should shocking be, Remember Ugolino condescends To eat the head of his arch-enemy The moment after he politely ends His tale: if foes be food in hell, at sea ’Tis surely fair to dine upon our friends, When shipwreck’s short allowance grows too scanty, Without being much more horrible than Dante.