“
The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.
”
”
Lois Lowry (The Giver (The Giver, #1))
“
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
”
”
Henri J.M. Nouwen (Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life)
“
If I can see pain in your eyes then share with me your tears. If I can see joy in your eyes then share with me your smile.
”
”
Santosh Kalwar
“
It’s what happens when two people become one: they no longer only share love. They also share all of the pain, heartache, sorrow, and grief.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Hopeless (Hopeless, #1))
“
Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.
”
”
Sarah Addison Allen (The Sugar Queen)
“
Women should be respected as well! Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn't women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?...Women, who struggle and suffer pain to ensure the continuation of the human race, make much tougher and more courageous soldiers than all those big-mouthed freedom-fighting heroes put together!
”
”
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
“
They'll say you are bad
or perhaps you are mad
or at least you
should stay undercover.
Your mind must be bare
if you would dare
to think you can love
more than one lover.
”
”
David Rovics
“
You’re only human. And as humans, we can’t expect to shoulder all of our pain. Sometimes we have to share it with the people who love us so we don’t come crashing down from the weight of it all
”
”
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us #1))
“
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
”
”
Alan Lightman (Einstein’s Dreams)
“
Ah how shameless – the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share.
”
”
Homer (The Odyssey)
“
It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia)
“
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.
”
”
Henri J.M. Nouwen
“
Shared pain is lessened.
Shared joy is increased.
Thus we refute entropy.
”
”
Spider Robinson
“
I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.
”
”
Audre Lorde
“
If life is a journey then let my soul travel and share your pain.
”
”
Santosh Kalwar
“
You couldn't expect anyone else to share your suffering. You had to carry your pain alone.
”
”
Kass Morgan (The 100 (The 100, #1))
“
Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved. No man is an island
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Anansi Boys)
“
Unending Love
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.
”
”
Rabindranath Tagore (Selected Poems)
“
Now there's something I understand a little better. Hate, sadness, even joy. to be able to share it with another person...Naruto Uzumaki from fighting him i learned that. he knew pain like i did and then he taught me that you can change your path. I wish that one day i can be needed by someone. Not as a frightening weapon...But as the sand's Kazekage.
”
”
Masashi Kishimoto
“
Bad things happen to everyone. Not that this was an excuse or a justification for wronging another human being. Still, all humans had this shared experience — that of suffering. No human being left this world without shedding a tear, or feeling pain, or wading into the sea of sorrow.
”
”
Sylvain Reynard (Gabriel's Inferno (Gabriel's Inferno, #1))
“
Dogs, lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you're going to lose a dog, and there's going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can't support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion. There's such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always aware that it comes with an unbearable price. Maybe loving dogs is a way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and the mistakes we make because of those illusions.
”
”
Dean Koontz (The Darkest Evening of the Year)
“
Sorry.
Sorry means you feel the pulse of other people's pain as well as your own, and saying it means you take a share of it. And so it binds us together, makes us trodden and sodden as one another. Sorry is a lot of things. It's a hole refilled. A debt repaid. Sorry is the wake of misdeed. It's the crippling ripple of consequence. Sorry is sadness, just as knowing is sadness. Sorry is sometimes self-pity. But Sorry, really, is not about you. It's theirs to take or leave.
Sorry means you leave yourself open, to embrace or to ridicule or to revenge. Sorry is a question that begs forgiveness, because the metronome of a good heart won't settle until things are set right and true. Sorry doesn't take things back, but it pushes things forward. It bridges the gap. Sorry is a sacrament. It's an offering. A gift.
”
”
Craig Silvey (Jasper Jones)
“
Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear. Why on earth are you there, when you're everywhere-come and get your share.
”
”
John Lennon
“
Blessed are those with cracks in their broken heart because that is how the light gets in.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
But time will slowly heal you, as it is doing for me. There are good days and there are difficult days. Your grief will never fully fade; it will always be with you--a shadow you carry in your soul--but it will become fainter as your life becomes brighter. You will learn to live outside of it again, as impossible as that may sound. Others who share your pain will also help you heal. Because you are not alone. Not in your fear or your grief or your hopes or your dreams. You are not alone.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1))
“
You can never escape me. Bullets don't harm me. Nothing harms me. But I know pain. I KNOW pain. Sometimes I share it. With someone like you.
”
”
Frank Miller (Batman: Year One)
“
She'd expected some backlash; it happened every time she shared her strength. But she hadn't anticipated so much raw anguish from Nico di Angelo… If this was only a portion of Nico’s pain… how could he bear it?
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus, #5))
“
DEMON MATH
What is JUST in a world
you've ripped in two
as if there could be
a half for me
a half for you
what is FAIR when
there is nothing
left to share
what is YOURS when
your pain is mine to bear
this sad math is mine
this mad path is mine
subtract they say
don't cry
back to the desk
try
forget addition
multiply
and i reply
this is why
remainders
hate
division.
”
”
Kami Garcia (Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles, #3))
“
In the end it was Shadowhunting they had bonded over—a shared
love of sharp-edged weapons, gleaming seraph blades, the painful
pleasure of burning Marks, the thought-numbing swiftness of battle.
When Alec had wanted to go out hunting alone with Jace, leaving Izzy
behind, Jace had spoken up for her: “We need her with us; she’s the
best there is. Aside from me, of course.”
She had loved him just for that.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
“
Maybe if I try hard enough, we'll fall into each other and become one single person and we can share our pain instead of carrying it by ourselves.
”
”
Jessica Sorensen (The Redemption of Callie & Kayden (The Coincidence, #2))
“
No one else could share his quandary. His agonies were a mixture of shame, of loss fueled by profoundly rooted fury—solitary burdens he had carried with him like pockets of sorrow weighing him down, forcing him to become stronger. When the Devil was gnawing at him, he’d withstood the pain.
”
”
Tom Baldwin (Macom Farm)
“
And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you
all through my life?-sharing my fire, my bed,
Sharing-oh, worst of all things!-the same head?-
And, when I feed myself, feeding you too?
”
”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (Mine the Harvest)
“
As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away.
”
”
Mohsin Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist)
“
There are never words for the strongest of our feelings. There is just the pain that we cannot share. Pain we must all feel alone.
”
”
James Frey (The Final Testament of the Holy Bible)
“
She sucked in a shuddering breath, and he pulled back far enough for them to share breath. Her fingers shook as she brushed them against his mouth, and his control nearly shredded apart right there.
'What are you waiting for?' he said, the words near guttural.
'Bastard,' she murmured, and kissed him.
Her mouth was soft and warm, and he bit back a groan. His body went still—his entire world went still—at that whisper of a kiss, the answer to a question he’d asked for centuries. He realized he was staring only when she withdrew slightly. His fingers tightened at her waist.
'Again,' he breathed.
She slid out of his grip. 'If we live through tomorrow, you’ll get the rest.'
He didn’t know whether to laugh or roar. 'Are you trying to bribe me into surviving?'
She smiled at last. And damn if it didn’t kill him, the quiet joy in her face.
They had walked out of darkness and pain and despair together. They were still walking out of it. So that smile … It struck him stupid every time he saw it and realized it was for him.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4))
“
To me, when someone wrongs you, you both share the burden of that wrongdoing - the pain of it weighs on both of you. Forgiveness, then, means choosing to bear the full weight all by yourself. Caleb's betrayal is something we both carry, and since he did it, all I've wanted is for him to take its weight away from me. I am not sure that I'm capable of shouldering it all myself - not sure that I am strong enough, or good enough.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
“
Still, something did not seem right, and Robin could tell from Victoire’s and Ramy’s faces that they thought so too. It took him a moment to realize what it was that grated on him, and when he did, it would bother him constantly, now and thereafter; it would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort.
”
”
R.F. Kuang (Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution)
“
When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.
”
”
Clarence Darrow (The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow (Modern Library Classics))
“
The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
”
”
Erma Bombeck
“
The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men)
“
That’s my girl,” she said, her eyes holding a shared pain as she saw my confusion. “Al, where are you going to put her? Not in your room. She’d pull a line through you and kill you when you hog the blankets. I’ll take the waif in. I promise I’ll bring this one up properly.
”
”
Kim Harrison (Pale Demon (The Hollows, #9))
“
You know, over the years, I've had my share of friends, enemies, lovers, losses, and triumphs. With time, they all begin to run together, but you will find the real moments are vibrant. The rest just fades away. Your pain will fade.
”
”
Klaus Mikaelson
“
The earth will never be the same again
Rock, water, tree, iron, share this greif
As distant stars participate in the pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
A Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
Every life is noted and is cherished,
and nothing loved is ever lost or perished.
”
”
Madeleine L'Engle (A Ring of Endless Light (Austin Family Chronicles, #4))
“
Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Anansi Boys)
“
You think I don’t know pain?” Puck shook his head at me. “Or loss? I’ve been around a lot longer than you, prince! I know what love is, and I’ve lost
my fair share, too. Just because we have a different way of handling it, doesn’t mean I don’t have scars of my own.”
“Name one,” I scoffed. “Give me one instance where you haven’t—”
“Meghan Chase!” Puck roared, startling me into silence. I blinked, and he sneered at me. “Yeah, your highness. I know what loss is. I’ve loved that
girl since before she knew me. But I waited. I waited because I didn’t want to lie about who I was. I wanted her to know the truth before anything else.
So I waited, and I did my job. For years, I protected her, biding my time, until the day she went into the Nevernever after her brother. And then you
came along. And I saw how she looked at you. And for the first time, I wanted to kill you as much as you wanted to kill me.
”
”
Julie Kagawa
“
Whatever he goes through, I feel. Whatever I go through, he feels. It’s what happens when two people become one: they no longer only share love. They also share all of the pain, heartache, sorrow, and grief.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Hopeless (Hopeless, #1))
“
You can’t selectively numb your anger, any more than you can turn off all lights in a room, and still expect to see the light.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes in the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokeberry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain. Shared and once again shared experience.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes)
“
Nearly everybody has his box of secret pain, shared with no one.
”
”
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
“
The most intimate feeling people can share is neither love nor hate, but pain.
”
”
Tess Gerritsen (The Surgeon (Rizzoli & Isles, #1))
“
When clouds of pain loom in the sky
When a shadow of sadness flickers by
When a tear finds its way to the eye
When fear keeps the loneliness alive
I try and console my heart
Why is it that you cry? I ask
This is only what life imparts
These deep silences within
Have been handed out to all by time
Everyone’s story has a little sorrow
Everyone’s share has a little sunshine
No need for water in your eyes
Every moment can be a new life
Why do you let them pass you by?
Oh heart, why is it that you cry?
”
”
Javed Akhtar
“
Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give Pleasure to our Lovers or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own Power....
”
”
Aldous Huxley (After Many a Summer Dies the Swan)
“
Because secrets do not increase in value if kept in a gore-ian lockbox, because one's past is either made useful or else mutates and becomes cancerous. We share things for the obvious reasons: it makes us feel un-alone, it spreads the weight over a larger area, it holds the possibility of making our share lighter. And it can work either way - not simply as a pain-relief device, but, in the case of not bad news but good, as a share-the-happy-things-I've-seen/lessons-I've-learned vehicle. Or as a tool for simple connectivity for its own sake, a testing of waters, a stab at engagement with a mass of strangers.
”
”
Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
“
To me, when someone wrongs you, you both share the burden of that wrongdoing—the pain of it weighs on both of you. Forgiveness, then, means choosing to bear the full weight all by yourself.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
“
The problem with bearing fanatical witness to this kind of human depravity is that ambiguity and contradiction easily overwhelm the nuance required for understanding. There seems to me that no logic applies to our time of terror, as if it were a dream. There was no lapse of incoherence; none of it was incomprehensible; our shared pain was not sensible then and unexplainable afterwards. It was actually all too real all the time, and we were simply trying to navigate an uncertain passage through it in search of safety.
”
”
John Payton Foden (Magenta)
“
The worse part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.
”
”
Lois Lowry (The Giver (The Giver, #1))
“
It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.
”
”
Judith Lewis Herman (Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror)
“
Whether one is rich or poor, educated or illiterate, religious or nonbelieving, man or woman, black, white, or brown, we are all the same. Physically, emotionally, and mentally, we are all equal. We all share basic needs for food, shelter, safety, and love. We all aspire to happiness and we all shun suffering. Each of us has hopes, worries, fears, and dreams. Each of us wants the best for our family and loved ones. We all experience pain when we suffer loss and joy when we achieve what we seek. On this fundamental level, religion, ethnicity, culture, and language make no difference.
”
”
Dalai Lama XIV (Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World's Religions Can Come Together)
“
She loved him. But he didn’t know how to love.
He could talk about love. He could see love and feel love. But he couldn’t give love.
He could make love. But he couldn’t make promises.
She had desperately wanted his promises.
She wanted his heart, knew she couldn’t have it so she took what she could get.
Temporary bliss. Passionate highs and lows. Withdrawal and manipulation.
He only stayed long enough to take what he needed and keep moving.
If he stopped moving, he would self-destruct.
If he stopped wandering, he would have to face himself.
He chose to stay in the dark where he couldn’t see.
If he exposed himself and the sun came out, he’d see his shadow.
He was deathly afraid of his shadow.
She saw his shadow, loved it, understood it. Saw potential in it.
She thought her love would change him.
He pushed and he pulled, tested boundaries, thinking she would never leave.
He knew he was hurting her, but didn’t know how to share anything but pain.
He was only comfortable in chaos. Claiming souls before they could claim him.
Her love, her body, she had given to him and he’d taken with such feigned sincerity, absorbing every drop of her.
His dark heart concealed.
She’d let him enter her spirit and stroke her soul where everything is love and sensation and surrender.
Wide open, exposed to deception.
It had never occurred to her that this desire was not love.
It was blinding the way she wanted him.
She couldn’t see what was really happening, only what she wanted to happen.
She suspected that he would always seek to minimize the risk of being split open, his secrets revealed.
He valued his soul’s privacy far more than he valued the intimacy of sincere connection so he kept his distance at any and all costs.
Intimacy would lead to his undoing—in his mind, an irrational and indulgent mistake.
When she discovered his indiscretions, she threw love in his face and beat him with it.
Somewhere deep down, in her labyrinth, her intricacy, the darkest part of her soul, she relished the mayhem.
She felt a sense of privilege for having such passion in her life.
He stirred her core.
The place she dared not enter.
The place she could not stir for herself.
But something wasn’t right.
His eyes were cold and dark.
His energy, unaffected.
He laughed at her and her antics, told her she was a mess.
Frantic, she looked for love hiding in his eyes, in his face, in his stance, and she found nothing but disdain.
And her heart stopped.
”
”
G.G. Renee Hill (The Beautiful Disruption)
“
Teccam explains there are two types of secrets. There are secrets of the mouth and secrets of the heart.
Most secrets are secrets of the mouth. Gossip shared and small scandals whispered. There secrets long to be let loose upon the world. A secret of the mouth is like a stone in your boot. At first you’re barely aware of it. Then it grows irritating, then intolerable. Secrets of the mouth grow larger the longer you keep them, swelling until they press against your lips. They fight to be let free.
Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become.
Teccam claims it is better to have a mouthful of poison than a secret of the heart. Any fool will spit out poison, he says, but we hoard these painful treasures. We swallow hard against them every day, forcing them deep inside us. They they sit, growing heavier, festering. Given enough time, they cannot help but crush the heart that holds them.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
“
It’s not mind-reading,’ she said. ‘Not even an empathy link. Just … a temporary wave of exhaustion. Primal emotions. Your pain washes over me. I take on some of your burden.’
Nico’s expression became guarded. He twisted the silver skull ring on his finger, the same way Reyna did with her silver ring when she was thinking. Sharing a habit with the son of Hades made her uneasy.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus, #5))
“
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.
”
”
Henri J.M. Nouwen
“
[But] I have come across anything so painfully beautiful as that kiss. I wish it was something I could save and share with the world so I could tell the universe: this is what it's like; this is how it feels when you fall.
”
”
Kiera Cass (The One (The Selection, #3))
“
There comes a time in some relationships when no matter how sincere the attempt to reconcile the differences or how strong the wish to recreate a part of the past once shared, the struggle becomes so painful that nothing else is felt and the world and all its beauty only add to the discomfort by providing cruel contrast.
”
”
Leo F. Buscaglia (Loving Each Other: The Challenge of Human Relationships)
“
December 26, 7:40 p.m.
Dear America,
I’ve been thinking of our first kiss. I suppose I should say first kisses, but what I mean is the second, the one I was actually invited to give you. Did I ever tell you how I felt that night? It wasn’t just getting my first kiss ever; it was getting to have that first kiss with you. I’ve seen so much, America, had access to the corners of our planet. But never have I come across anything so painfully beautiful as that kiss. I wish it was something I could catch with a net or place in a book. I wish it was something I could save and share with the world so I could tell the universe: this is what it’s like; this is how it feels when you fall.
These letters are so embarrassing. I’ll have to burn them before you get home.
Maxon
”
”
Kiera Cass (The One (The Selection, #3))
“
We are closest to Christ when sharing the world’s misery. Think you Jesus came to remove our pains? Wherever did you get that notion? The Lord came, not to remove our suffering, but to show us the way through it to the glory beyond. We can overcome our travails. That is the promise of the cross.
”
”
Stephen R. Lawhead
“
When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.
”
”
Nicholas D. Kristof (Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide)
“
Cal's face swam into view. I couldn't hear him over the ringing in my ears. I'm pretty sure he mouthed for me to lie still, which seemed easy enough.
He held my hand, and while the pain didn't go away, a woozy sense of calm spread over me. So I was pretty dispassionate as I rolled my head to the side and watched Cal pull a six-inch shared of demonglass out of my shoulder. As soon as it was out, the burning faded, but I knew I'd have yet another another scar. "That present sucked," I muttered.
”
”
Rachel Hawkins (Demonglass (Hex Hall, #2))
“
God has brought a very wise Japanese lady into my life who lives in Calif. We've never met, but she has shared a tremendous amount of wisdom with me concerning unconditional love within relationships. Here is one of the things she said to me this evening when we were discussing "Soul Mates."
"Soul mates aren't perfect people. They can come into your life and provide polar emotional experiences from intense love to intense pain. Growth comes from both. And a soul mate helps you grow. It isn't just "...and they lived happily ever after" but "...and they lived!" ~ From my mentor ~ Lori Chidori Phillips
”
”
Dianne Rosena Jones
“
For most people, what is so painful about reading is that you read something and you don't have anybody to share it with. In part what the book club opens up is that people can read a book and then have someone else to talk about it with. Then they see that a book can lead to the pleasure of conversation, that the solitary act of reading can actually be a part of the path to communion and community.
”
”
bell hooks
“
It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering….
”
”
Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
“
She had so much love to give - she had always felt that - and now there was somebody to whom she could give this love, and that, she knew, was good; for that is what redeems us, that is what makes our pain and sorrow bearable - this giving of love to others, this sharing of the heart.
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #6))
“
Relatives share the same bloodline, but FAMILY shares your successes, pains, ambitions, celebrations, failures, values, love and so much more. I realize that many friends have become Family and some relatives just are not. (Analogy: Blood scatters everywhere, when Family runs together...When I thought I needed "Blood" to survive, I realized that what I really needed was "Family"!)
”
”
Gaye Miller 2012
“
We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in someways shameful- because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed- is made much more bearable when it is shared, face to face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them...
”
”
Alice Walker
“
Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength. Stealing our will, for what are we without empathy? What manner of joy might we find in our live if we cannot understand the joys and pains of those around us, if we cannot share in a greater community.
”
”
R.A. Salvatore (The Silent Blade (Forgotten Realms: Paths of Darkness, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #11))
“
It sounded old. Deserve. Old and tired and beaten to death. Deserve. Now it seemed to him that he was always saying or thinking that he didn't deserve some bad luck, or some bad treatment from others. He'd told Guitar that he didn't "deserve" his family's dependence, hatred, or whatever. That he didn't even "deserve" to hear all the misery and mutual accusations his parents unloaded on him. Nor did he "deserve" Hagar's vengeance. But why shouldn't his parents tell him their personal problems? If not him, then who? And if a stranger could try to kill him, surely Hagar, who knew him and whom he'd thrown away like a wad of chewing gum after the flavor was gone––she had a right to try to kill him too.
Apparently he though he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be...what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness.
”
”
Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon)
“
We all have scars; both inside and out. Use your experience to support those who are going down the same road of destruction you once went down. Know that your past is worth more than the pain you once carried, because it can now be used to comfort and give strength to another soul who is suffering. Cherish your trials and tribulations as gifts; embrace these opportunities to share the grace you have been given.
”
”
Katie Maslin
“
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering – for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
”
”
Henri J.M. Nouwen
“
Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and do nothing about it, in her book, were little better than those who inflicted it. They were the bad Samaritans.
”
”
John Le Carré (The Constant Gardener)
“
BETRAYAL
No failure in Life, whether of love or money, is ever really that simple; it usually involves a type of a shadowy betrayal, buried in a secret, mass grave of shared hopes and dreams.
That universal mass grave exists in a private cemetery that most... both those suffering from the loss, but especially those committing the betrayal, refuse to acknowledge its existence.
When you realize you've been deeply betrayed, fear really hits you. That's what you feel first. And then it's anger and frustration. Then disspointment and disilussionment.
Part of the problem is how little we understand about the ultimate effects and consequences of betrayal on our hearts and spirits; and on trust and respect for our fellow brothers and sisters.
In writing, there are only really a few good stories to tell, and in the end, and betrayal and the failure of love is one of the most powerful stories to tell.
Tragedy in life normally comes with betrayal and compromise- by trading in our integrity and failing to treat life and others in our life, with respect and dignity. That's really where the truest and the most tragic failures comes from... they come making the choice to betray another soul, and in turn, giving up a peice of your own.
”
”
José N. Harris (Mi Vida)
“
You don't think I know that?” Puck was shouting now, green eyes feverish. “You don't think I regret what I did, every single day? You lost Ariella, but I lost you both! Believe it or not, I was kind of a mess, too, Ash. It got to a point where I actually looked forward to our random duels, because that was the only time I could talk to you. When you were freaking trying to kill me!”
“Don't compare your loss to mine,” I snarled. “You have no idea what I went through, what you caused.”
“You think I don't know pain?” Puck shook his head at me. “Or loss? I've been around a lot longer than you, prince! I know what love is, and I've lost my fair share, too. Just because we have a different way of handling it, doesn't mean I don't have scars of my own.”
“Name one,” I scoffed. “Give me one instance where you haven't—”
“Meghan Chase!” Puck roared, startling me into silence.
”
”
Julie Kagawa (The Iron Knight (The Iron Fey, #4))
“
This is an ode to all of those that have never asked for one.
A thank you in words to all of those that do not do
what they do so well for the thanking.
This is to the mothers.
This is to the ones who match our first scream
with their loudest scream; who harmonize in our shared pain
and joy and terrified wonder when life begins.
This is to the mothers.
To the ones who stay up late and wake up early and always know
the distance between their soft humming song and our tired ears.
To the lips that find their way to our foreheads and know,
somehow always know, if too much heat is living in our skin.
To the hands that spread the jam on the bread and the mesmerizing
patient removal of the crust we just cannot stomach.
This is to the mothers.
To the ones who shout the loudest and fight the hardest and sacrifice
the most to keep the smiles glued to our faces and the magic
spinning through our days. To the pride they have for us
that cannot fit inside after all they have endured.
To the leaking of it out their eyes and onto the backs of their
hands, to the trails of makeup left behind as they smile
through those tears and somehow always manage a laugh.
This is to the patience and perseverance and unyielding promise
that at any moment they would give up their lives to protect ours.
This is to the mothers.
To the single mom’s working four jobs to put the cheese in the mac
and the apple back into the juice so their children, like birds in
a nest, can find food in their mouths and pillows under their heads.
To the dreams put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement
of all priority. This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that
find the energy to go to work every day; to the widows and the
happily married.
To the young mothers and those that deal with the unexpected
announcement of a new arrival far later than they ever anticipated.
This is to the mothers.
This is to the sack lunches and sleepover parties, to the soccer games
and oranges slices at halftime. This is to the hot chocolate
after snowy walks and the arguing with the umpire
at the little league game. To the frosting ofbirthday cakes
and the candles that are always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts,
the slip-n-slides and the iced tea on summer days.
This is to the ones that show us the way to finding our own way.
To the cutting of the cord, quite literally the first time
and even more painfully and metaphorically the second time around.
To the mothers who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers
and if time is gentle enough, live to see the children of their children
have children of their own. To the love.
My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere
only mothers have seen and know the secret location of.
To the love that grows stronger as their hands grow weaker
and the spread of jam becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier
to find and sack lunches no longer need making.
This is to the way the tears look falling from the smile lines
around their eyes and the mascara that just might always be
smeared with the remains of their pride for all they have created.
This is to the mothers.
”
”
Tyler Knott Gregson
“
I'm not crying out for help, but I am sharing my experience in the hopes that readers will get something out of it. I'm not the one who gets to decide what that is, if anything. I'm just starting the "journey" if you will, so I can't possibly know yet what the "message" of my life really is. I only know what has happened so far, and how I've felt up until this moment. I agree that reading about the pain of others is concerning when they are still hurting and in the same situation as when they wrote about it. But what can you do? You can reach out, ask how you can help and be there to listen. You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. You can't love someone who doesn't love themselves enough to take care of themselves and stay out of bad situations. Believe me, I know this.
”
”
Ashly Lorenzana
“
The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contra-indicated. But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing nor ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense, is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, 'I don't like it!', 'It's boring!' It is not a point that one can argue; but it like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached.
”
”
Andrei Tarkovsky (Sculpting in Time)
“
Remember me as the girl who married you, the woman who had your babies, who kept your house, weeded your garden, your soul mate and best friend. I was the woman who could make you laugh and cry. I could calm you when you were upset but yet infuriate you also like no other. For the passion and the love we shared, I thank-you. I could read your mind and finish your sentences. I knew everything you loved and hated and we had no secrets from one another. I knew what to say when you were upset to make things alright again. I felt your pain and I shared your joy. I embraced your strengths and celebrated your differences. I love you and everything about you and the physical limitations of worlds will not change that”.
”
”
Annette J. Dunlea
“
Because they’re so attuned to feelings, internalizers are extremely sensitive to the quality of emotional intimacy in their relationships. Their entire personality longs for emotional spontaneity and intimacy, and they can’t be satisfied with less. Therefore, when they’re raised by immature and emotionally phobic parents, they feel painfully lonely. If there’s anything internalizers have in common, it’s their need to share their inner experience. As children, their need for genuine emotional connection is the central fact of their existence. Nothing hurts their spirit more than being around someone who won’t engage with them emotionally. A blank face kills something in them. They read people closely, looking for signs that they’ve made a connection. This isn’t a social urge, like wanting people to chat with; it’s a powerful hunger to connect heart to heart with a like-minded person who can understand them. They find nothing more exhilarating than clicking with someone who gets them. When they can’t make that kind of connection, they feel emotional loneliness. From
”
”
Lindsay C. Gibson (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents)
“
Discipline
I am old and I have had
more than my share of good and bad.
I've had love and sorrow, seen sudden death
and been left alone and of love bereft.
I thought I would never love again
and I thought my life was grief and pain.
The edge between life and death was thin,
but then I discovered discipline.
I learned to smile when I felt sad,
I learned to take the good and the bad,
I learned to care a great deal more
for the world about me than before.
I began to forget the "Me" and "I"
and joined in life as it rolled by:
this may not mean sheer ecstasy
but is better by far than "I" and "Me.
”
”
Meryl Gordon
“
There are certain human truths, like death, that nobody gets to escape, and pain, which everybody not only feels but needs. You have to go through it. So for everybody, at some point—very often for teenagers—the world is a terrible place. The world is a giant, awful black hole of evil conspiracy. Sometimes that’s because you have perspective on what the world’s really like, and sometimes it’s because you’ve completely lost perspective and you’re having a terrible day. But no matter what, everybody shares that feeling, and life is kind of about your ways around that, your ways around certain truths.
”
”
Joss Whedon
“
I want to share something Virginia Woolf wrote: 'English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache...The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.' And we're such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn't real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless,inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I'd ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy.
”
”
John Green (Turtles All the Way Down)
“
I used to think Romeo and Juliet was the greatest love story ever written. But now that I’m middle-aged, I know better. Oh, Romeo certainly thinks he loves his Juliet. Driven by hormones, he unquestionably lusts for her. But if he loves her, it’s a shallow love. You want proof?” Cagney didn’t wait for Dr. Victor to say yay or nay.
“Soon after meeting her for the first time, he realizes he forgot to ask her for her name. Can true love be founded upon such shallow acquaintance? I don’t think so. And at the end, when he thinks she’s dead, he finds no comfort in living out the remainder of his life within the paradigm of his love, at least keeping alive the memory of what they had briefly shared, even if it was no more than illusion, or more accurately, hormonal.
“Those of us watching events unfold from the darkness know she merely lies in slumber. But does he seek the reason for her life-like appearance? No. Instead he accuses Death of amorousness, convinced that the ‘lean abhorred monster’ endeavors to keep Juliet in her present state, her cheeks flushed, so that she might cater to his own dissolute desires. But does Romeo hold her in his arms one last time and feel the warmth of her blood still coursing through her veins? Does he pinch her to see if she might awaken? Hold a mirror to her nose to see if her breath fogs it? Once, twice, three times a ‘no.’”
Cagney sighed, listened to the leather creak as he shifted his weight in his chair.
“No,” he repeated. “His alleged love is so superficial and selfish that he seeks to escape the pain of loss by taking his own life. That’s not love, but obsessive infatuation. Had they wed—Juliet bearing many children, bonding, growing together, the masks of the star-struck teens they once were long ago cast away, basking in the comforting campfire of a love born of a lifetime together, not devoured by the raging forest fire of youth that consumes everything and leaves behind nothing—and she died of natural causes, would Romeo have been so moved to take his own life, or would he have grieved properly, for her loss and not just his own?
”
”
J. Conrad Guest (The Cobb Legacy)
“
Slowly, painfully, I realized what I had been reading from the very first words of his journal. My husband had had an inner life that went beyond his gregarious exterior, and if I had known enough to let him inside my guard, I might have understood this fact. Except I hadn’t, of course. I had let tidal pools and fungi that could devour plastic inside my guard, but not him. Of all the aspects of the journal, this ate at me the most. He had created his share of our problems—by pushing me too hard, by wanting too much, by trying to see something in me that didn’t exist. But I could have met him partway and retained my sovereignty. And now it was too late.
”
”
Jeff VanderMeer (Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1))
“
Why love the boy in a March field with his kite braving the sky? Because our fingers burn with the hot string singeing our hands. Why love some girl viewed from a train bent to a country well? The tongue remembers iron water cool on some long lost noon. Why weep at strangers dead by the road? They resemble friends unseen in forty years. Why laugh when clowns are hot by pies? We taste custard we taste life. Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokeberry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain. Shared and once again shared experience. Billions of prickling textures. Cut one sense away, cut part of life away. Cut two senses; life halves itself on the instant. We love what we know, we love what we are. Common cause, common cause, common cause of mouth, eye, ear, tongue, hand, nose, flesh, heart, and soul.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes)
“
We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity. I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible. But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.
”
”
Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption)
“
Life, he realized, was much like a song.
In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.
For the first time in months, he felt no pain at all; for the first time in years, he knew his questions had answers. As he listened to the song that Ronnie had finished, the song that Ronnie had perfected, he closed his eyes in the knowledge that his search for God's presence had been fulfilled.
He finally understood that God's presence was everywhere, at all times, and was experienced by everyone at one time or another. It had been with him in the workshop as he'd labored over the window with Jonah; it had been present in the weeks he'd spent with Ronnie. It was present here and now as his daughter played their song, the last song they would ever share. In retrospect, he wondered how he could have missed something so incredibly obvious.
God, he suddenly understood, was love in its purest form, and in these last months with his children, he had felt His touch as surely as he had heard the music spilling from Ronnie's hands.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (The Last Song)
“
It’s to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It’s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy ... we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What’s left? What else is there that hasn’t been dealt out like a pack of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what’s shared – she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she’s everybody’s and it don’t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it’s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it’s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain.
”
”
Tom Stoppard (The Real Thing)
“
RAINBOW VOICES
I ask people of the world and children of light to start reflecting the stories of their souls to vibrate wisdom around the earth. Pick up a paintbrush or microphone. Press the inks of your pens to paper or tap words onto your screens, and start sharing what you know and have learned with the masses. Turn your personal painting into a piece of the earth's puzzle so that our unified assemblage of thoughts, experiences and lessons reveal common truths that cannot be denied. Imagine the changes that could happen if everyone suddenly stopped acting like someone else, became true to themselves, and celebrated the beauty of their uniqueness. Only after people have willingly removed their masks and costumes, and have begun pouring light from their hearts to reveal their vulnerability, dreams and pains, will we be able to see that beneath the surface we are all the same. After all, how can the world collectively fight for truth, if soldiers in its army are void of truth? We must first all be true by putting truth in our words and actions. And to do so, everyone must learn to think and react with their conscience. Imagine what Truth could do to neutralize the clutches of evil once this black and white world suddenly became embraced by a strong rainbow of loud powerful voices. We could put color back into every home, every school, every industry, every nation, and every garden on earth where flowers have been crushed by corruption.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Naruto… I now remember the words you once said to me. That when you're with me, you finally understand what it's like to have a brother… And when I think of it that way… That feeling… I finally get it now. I've been travelling around the world and I seem to recall these memories a lot. We were alone and starved of love. Kids that lived in a world full of hate. And from that point on, we went our separate ways… and fought. But time has passed and now I'm thinking… Could it be that… just like how the hope and and pain from my father, mother and my brother, Itachi flowed into me… I'd understand your pain and hopes too, Naruto? You never abandoned me, no matter what. And you never gave up on me, coming closer when I pulled away. It wouldn't have surprised me if you hated me, but you didn't… You kept insisting that we were friends. And even that, I nearly destroyed. You fought to stop me… to the point you lost an arm. All because you were my friend. You saved me. The us that quarrelled over the smallest things… are now able to share the pain in each other's hearts. On my journey around the world, I noticed… That all these feelings of mine aren't just about us, I'm sure it's the same for everything else. But… there aren't a lot of people like you. And things won't go as planned, look at us. It's especially true when it comes to bigger things. I think it's the same as praying. And until I can do it, I'll stay strong. The beings that have been entrusted with hope… that's us. That's what makes us shinobi.
”
”
Masashi Kishimoto
“
I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was.
But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information.
"You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old."
I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty.
The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever.
Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..
”
”
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
“
Here are the sounds of Wear. It rattles stone on stone. It sucks its teeth. It sings. It hisses like the rain. It roars. It laughs. It claps its hands. Sometimes I think it prays. In winter, through the ice, I've seen it moving swift and black as Tune, without a sound.
Here are the sights of Wear. It falls in braids. It parts at rocks and tumbles round them white as down or flashes over them in silver quilts. It tosses fallen trees like bits of straw yet spins a single leaf as gentle as a maid. Sometimes it coils for rest in darkling pools and sometimes it leaps its banks and shatters in the air. In autumn, I've seen it breathe a mist so thick and grey you'd never know old Wear was there at all.
Each day, for years and years, I've gone and sat in it. Usually at dusk I clamber down and slowly sink myself to where it laps against my breast. Is it too much to say, in winter, that I die? Something of me dies at least.
First there's the fiery sting of cold that almost stops my breath, the aching torment in my limbs. I think I may go mad, my wits so outraged that they seek to flee my skull like rats a ship that's going down. I puff. I gasp. Then inch by inch a blessed numbness comes. I have no legs, no arms. My very heart grows still. These floating hands are not my hands. The ancient flesh I wear is rags for all I feel of it.
"Praise, Praise!" I croak. Praise God for all that's holy, cold, and dark. Praise him for all we lose, for all the river of the years bears off. Praise him for stillness in the wake of pain. Praise him for emptiness. And as you race to spill into the sea, praise him yourself, old Wear. Praise him for dying and the peace of death.
In the little church I built of wood for Mary, I hollowed out a place for him. Perkin brings him by the pail and pours him in. Now that I can hardly walk, I crawl to meet him there. He takes me in his chilly lap to wash me of my sins. Or I kneel down beside him till within his depths I see a star.
Sometimes this star is still. Sometimes she dances. She is Mary's star. Within that little pool of Wear she winks at me. I wink at her. The secret that we share I cannot tell in full. But this much I will tell. What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.
”
”
Frederick Buechner (Godric)
“
Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.
Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight. We've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.
For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.
We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.
And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.
I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute.
We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue.
I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it."
There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."
Thank you.
”
”
Ronald Reagan