For When Times Are Tough

I've talked in previous posts (Missed Miscarriage, Yellow Nursery Stripes, April 19, From August to August) about the healing process I went through after my miscarriage - facing the grief and finding the strength to try it all again in pursuit of my dreams.

One thing I did was spend a lot of time finding and compiling facts and quotations I found personally helpful. I started with encouraging statistics and uplifting sentiments that were miscarriage-specific, but as I felt emotionally stronger, my document quickly evolved into one filled with more generic advice - something I thought I might be able to refer to again, for any number of losses (deaths, relationships, career choices, self-doubt, etc.), whenever the inevitable next one happened in my life.

Finding these quotations and organizing them into a love letter of sorts/a how-to guide for myself was very therapeutic for me (and admittedly a very "Ravenclaw" thing to do, so I realize it's not everyone's cup of tea...) It was also likely the process of creating the list, more than the actual content, which helped me most, since it necessitated spending time self-reflecting and prioritizing my mental health. I don't know if I actually will refer to this list again in the future; I might compile an entirely new list instead.

Still, I thought I would share some of the quotations I found (and the structure I organized them into), in case this might help anyone else, too. When I find it hard to accept my own thoughts or truly believe my own words, reading the words that others have written can be wonderfully affirming and invaluable.

An abridged version of the document I created is below. (And yes, the full document I wrote - and am still adding to, whenever I find more quotes that speak to me - really is even longer than this!) :)

***

You're allowed to feel the way you feel. You are allowed to grieve for things you've lost. First, you need to give yourself that time.

Then, when the grief is no longer all-consuming, read this letter to remind yourself that you are also allowed to romanticize, reframe, and transform your pain. You do not have to keep living in it.

Some of these sentiments contradict each others; still others are at least occasionally untrue. They may be things you want to believe, but have trouble actually believing. On days when you are determined to get in the way of your own happiness, that may seem like enough reason to reject them. But remember: something does not have to be an absolute truth to be beneficial.

"You're going to live your life based on delusions (and you are, because we all do)... Why not at least select a delusion that is helpful?" (Elizabeth Gilbert - Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)

Think of this not as a list of truths, but as a list of useful delusions. And if that is not enough - if at any time your grief returns or you don't have it in you to forge continuously ahead - you are allowed to take a step back and grieve all over again. Grief is not linear. The words below will not always give you comfort. But in those moments when you're healed enough to hear them, they are here for you.

"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." (John F. Kennedy)

This letter is your roof, and you have prepared it so it will be there for you when next it rains. Use it. May these words inspire you, and may its compilation remind you of your foresight and strength. You have outlived grief in the past, and you will outlive it again.

*

Dear Andrea,

Times are tough right now - so tough that you may want nothing more than to deny it or move quickly past it. But first you need to make sure you've allowed yourself to truly feel your grief. Name it. Analyze it. Confront it. Write about it.

• "Numbing the pain for awhile will make it worse when you finally feel it." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)
• "Of all the things in the world, suffering is the most real. You can never ignore it or doubt it." (Yuval Noah Harari - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
• "Research has found that the act of not discussing a traumatic event or confiding it to another person can be more damaging than the actual event... Writing about traumatic experience can produce measurable changes in physical and mental health." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "To survive something we first need to know what it is we're surviving." (Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows)

To be human is to grieve, and for better or worse, you are a part of the web of humanity.

• "Every human requires food and water to survive and every human has a heart that bleeds, loves, and grieves." (Suzy Kassem - Rise Up and Salute the Sun)
• "Life isn't pretty / We all get a little wrecked sometimes." (The Veronicas - On Your Side)
• "You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human." (David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas)
• "Life is a series of losses... We're all terminal." (Kate Bowler - Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved)
• "There's always gonna be another mountain / I'm always gonna wanna make it move / Always gonna be an uphill battle / Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose" (Miley Cyrus - The Climb)
• "It if don't hurt now, just wait, just wait awhile / Ain't in fun / Living in the real world" (Paramore - Ain't It Fun)

Life is, at times, inexplicably and inescapably awful. The bad and good in life are permanently tied up in each other. Uncleavable.

• "I've made some friends, and I've lost some too." (Andrew McMahon - Cecilia and the Satellites)
• "You know time will give and time will take." (Phillip Phillips - Raging Fire)
• "I can't reconcile the way that the world is jolted by events that are wonderful and terrible, the gorgeous and the tragic. Except that I am beginning to believe that these opportunities do not cancel each other out. Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard." (Kate Bowler - Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved)

You did nothing to deserve this pain. You did nothing wrong. In fact - you're doing everything right. You're hurt right now because in trying to experience all the good that life has to offer, you also stumbled upon the bad. You lost because you were brave enough to try to win.

• "Now we're falling through the ice / We made our bed and rolled the dice / Well every gamble has a price." (Banners - Empires on Fire)
• "Everybody tries to put some love on the line / And everybody feels a broken heart sometimes." (Teddy Geiger - These Walls)
• "The sorrow we feel when we lose a loved one is the price we pay to have had them in our lives." (Rob Liano)
• "What are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of it?" (Elizabeth Gilbert - Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)

When you love someone or something, you make yourself vulnerable to loss.

• "The course of true love never did run smooth." (William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream)
• "Love is uncertain. It is incredibly risky. And loving someone leaves us emotionally exposed." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "Where there is desire, there is gonna be a flame / Where there is a flame, someone's bound to get burned." (Pink - Try)
• "I find it bittersweet / 'Cause you gave me something to lose / If you love someone and you're not afraid to lose 'em / You'll probably never love someone like I do." (Lukas Graham - Love Someone)
• "He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes." (Buddha)
• "Here's the truth: Who is spared love is spared grief." (David Mitchell - Bone Clocks)

But that is no reason not to love, or live.

• "Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center of meaningful human experiences... To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living... Living without connections - without knowing love and belonging - is not victory." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability. To be alive is to be vulnerable." (Madeleine L'Engle)
• "Love doesn't discriminate / Between the sinners and the saints / It takes and it takes and it takes / And we keep loving anyway... Death doesn't discriminate / Between the sinners and the saints / It takes and it takes and it takes / And we keep living anyway" (Hamilton Soundtrack -Wait for It)
• "Hope that you fall in love / And it hurts so bad / The only way you can know / You gave it all you had." (One Republic - I Lived)
• "If this love is pain, well darling, let's hurt tonight." (One Republic - Let's Hurt Tonight)

If we try to avoid the bad, we will fail to experience any of the good. There is nothing to do but lean in and embrace it all.

• "The world is an ugly place. We must live in it." (Madeline Miller - Circe)
• "If you hide under the covers / You might never see the light of day" (Mary Poppins Returns - Trip a Little Light Fantastic)
• "Numbing vulnerability doesn't just deaden the pain of our difficult experiences; numbing vulnerability also dulls our experiences of love, joy, belonging, creativity, and empathy. We can't selectively numb emotion. Numb the dark and you numb the light." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action." (Benjamin Disraeli)
• "You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could." (Louise Erdrich - The Painted Drum)

Practice fearlessness - even when you're afraid.

• "Even when I'm scared I have to try to fly / Sometimes I fall / But I've seen it done before / I gotta step outside these walls" (Teddy Geiger - These Walls)
• "If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever." (Thomas Aquinas)
• "You have plenty of courage. All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid." (L. Frank Baum - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)
• "I wanted you to see what real courage is. It's when you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what." (Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird)
• "Living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear... You have to be willing to take risks if you want to live a creative existence." (Elizabeth Gilbert - Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
• "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears." (Nelson Mandela)

We can't choose what happens to us when we try. But we can choose to try anyway. And the act of making that choice both forges and proves our inner strength.

• "There are only two mistakes one can make: not going all the way, and not starting." (Buddha)
• "I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to become." (Carl Jung)
• "Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional. Our only choice is a question of engagement. Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "It was the difference between being dragged into the area to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but... there was all the difference in the world." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)
• "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena... who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly." (Theodore Roosevelt)

Picking yourself up and trying again is a choice you may have to make over and over again. But you can, and you will.

• "Just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die / You gotta get up and try, try, try" (Pink - Try)
• "Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent." (Marilyn vos Savant)
• "You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it." (Margaret Thatcher)
• "This is how things go. You fix them, and they go awry, and then you fix them again." (Madeline Miller - Circe)
• "It was important to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)
• "Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall." (Confucius)
• "I'll rise up / High like the waves / I'll rise up / In spite of the ache / I'll rise up / And I'll do it a thousand times again." (Andra Day - Rise Up)

You will glean wisdom from this pain. It will grow you and deepen you.

• "Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge and the longer you are on earth the more experiences you are sure to get." (L. Frank Baum - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)
• "Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind." (Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex)
• "It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)
• "People who only have good experiences aren't very interesting. They may be content, and happy after a fashion, but they aren't very deep." (Peter Cameron - Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You)
• "The goal is not getting comfortable, but normalizing discomfort. We need to cultivate the courage to be uncomfortable and to teach people around us how to accept discomfort as a part of growth." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "Don't give in / Don't you dare quit so easy / There is a lot we can learn from this loss" (Snow Patrol - Don't Give In)
• "It's times like these you learn to live again / It's times like these you give and give again / It's times like these / Time and time again" (Foo Fighters - Times Like These)

Suffering brings enlightenment and empathy.

• "The wound is the place where the Light enters you." (Rumi)
• "I had to go through hell to prove I'm not insane / Had to meet the devil just to know his name." (Ella Henderson - Ghost)
• "Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity of our purpose or deeper or more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path. (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "There is no shame in what you are feeling. On the contrary, the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)
• "My own suffering began to feel like it had revealed to me the suffering of others, a world of those who, like me, are stumbling in the debris of dreams they thought they were entitled to and plans they didn't realize they had made." (Kate Bowler - Everything Happens For a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved)
• "The pain sculpts us into someone who understands more deeply, hurts more often, appreciates more quickly, cries more easily, hopes more desperately, and loves more openly." (Unknown)
• "In order to act morally...you need to develop a deep appreciation of suffering... And if you want to know the truth of the universe, about the meaning of life, and about your own identity, the best place to start is by observing suffering and exploring what it is." (Yuval Noah Harari - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
• "Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others." (Pema Chodron)

You are a block of marble, and pain is the chisel gradually shaping you into the masterpiece that you are. It's good that difficult times are inevitable - because they are also useful.

• "Under this pressure, under this weight / We are diamonds taking shape" (Coldplay - Adventure of a Lifetime)
• "Grief does not change you. It reveals you." (John Green - The Fault in Our Stars)
• "Even if I could [erase your scars], I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)
• "The scars themselves I offered to wipe away. He shook his head. 'How would I know myself?' They suited him. Whoever saw him must salute and say: There is a man who has seen the world. There is a captain with stories to tell." (Madeline Miller - Circe)
• "I am brave, I am bruised / I am who I'm meant to be / This is me." (Keala Settle, The Greatest Showman Soundtrack - This is Me)

Life is built from pain; so use your pain to build the life you desire. Treat this experience as nourishment for your soul and the spark that can light your creative projects.

• "The winter's cold / But the snow still lightly settles on the trees / And a mess is still a moment I can seize" (Gabe Dixon Band - All Will Be Well)
• "You're going to go through tough times - that's life. But I say, 'Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.' See the positive in negative events." (Joel Osteen)
• "I cannot bear this world a moment longer... Then child, make another." (Madeline Miller - Circe)
• "The opposite of war isn't peace... It's creation!" (Rent Soundtrack - La Vie Boheme)
• "Grief needs an outlet. Creativity offers one." (Hope Edelman)
• "Artists crave experiences because that's how they make art." (Whitney Scharer - The Age of Light)
• "Pick up a pen, start writing / I wanna talk about what I have learned / The hard-won wisdom I have earned." (Hamilton Soundtrack - One Last Time)

There is a time in every compelling narrative when things get difficult. Without conflict to overcome, there is no story. It is not easy - but it is worth it.

• "There was only one way to the other side, and that was through the pain." (Vanessa Diffenbaugh - The Language of Flowers)
• "The harder the struggle, the more glorious the triumph." (Unknown)
• "Such narrative arcs make good movies but shitty existences." (David Mitchell - Bone Clocks)
• "I guess the bad can get better / Gotta be wrong before it's right / But still the growing pains, growing pains are keeping me up at night" (Alessia Cara - Growing Pains)
• "You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost." (Helen Keller)

Challenging times are opportunities to remind yourself what you're made of, and chances to grow further evidence of your tenacity and success.

• "When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways - either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength." (Dalai Lama)
• "Grief and resilience live together." (Michelle Obama - Becoming)
• "What does not destroy me makes me stronger." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
• "Do not confuse my bad days as a sign of weakness. Those are the days I am actually fighting my hardest." (Unknown)
• "Experience gives us the advantage of knowing that we can survive the exposure and uncertainty, and that it's worth the risk." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "You can take everything I have / You can take everything I am / Like I'm made of glass, like I'm made of paper / Go on and try to tear me down / I will keep rising from the ground / Like a skyscraper" (Demi Lovato - Skyscraper)

In the future, you will cherish the memories of this experience, and draw on them for comfort and strength.

• "Give it all or give it up / I won't settle for enough / It's the highs and it's the lows we remember" (Ocean Park Standoff - Good News)
• "There will be a sea of tears / But sooner or later the sea will dry up / And you'll learn to embrace the wet sand revealed." (Sanhita Baruah)
• "One day in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." (Sigmund Freud)
• "Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing." (Elizabeth Gilbert)

Your narrative is your own narrative, and it will follow its own timeline.

• "There is purpose in your season of waiting." (Megan Smalley)
• "Time is a force and we must allow it to do its work, must respect its power." (Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows)
• "Anxiety happens when you think you have to figure out everything all at once. Breathe. You're strong. You got this. Take it day by day." (Karen Salmansohn)
• "If we walk far enough, we shall sometime come to someplace." (L. Frank Baum - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)
• "Don't rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the most capacity to transform you." (Rob Bell)

Don't worry about what future bad things might happen.

• "Contemplating the task ahead would not make it easier." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)
• "I don't think being frightened will help." (Madeline Miller - Circe)
• "Worry does not take away tomorrow's troubles. It takes away today's peace." (Randy Armstrong)
• "No good sittin' worryin' about it. What's comin' will come, an' we'll meet it when it does." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

Don't wallow in what would've-could've-should've been, either.

• "Nostalgia is a dangerous form of comparison." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "You're holding on to what you never had" (Hailee Steinfeld - Let Go)
• "Don't fall in love with the way things were / It'll fuck up your mind" (Snow Patrol - Don't Give In)
• "Leave the past behind you. If you don't leave it there, it clutters everything up and you just keep tripping over it." (Laini Taylor - Muse of Nightmares)
• "May your past be the sound / Of your feet upon the ground / And carry on" (Fun. - Carry On)

Focus instead on the vast potential of your present and future - the things that are still changeable, the successes and joys you've yet to see. Allow yourself to be happy and optimistic. Allow yourself to hope and dream and want things.

• "Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose." (Lyndon B. Johnson)
• "It is as wrong to deny the possible as it is to deny the problem." (Dr. Dennis Saleebey)
• "We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world." (Jack Gilbert)
• "You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down." (Charlie Chaplin)
• "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." (Oscar Wilde)
• "Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
• "The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew." (Gregory Maguire - Wicked)

Allow yourself to try again - to throw yourself back into the fray, to make new plans and follow through on them.

• "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)
• "Life won't just happen to you. You have to happen to it." (Laini Taylor - Strange the Dreamer)
• "Hope is a combination of setting goals, having the tenacity and perseverance to pursue them, and believing in our own abilities." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "Wishes don't just come true. They're only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bull's-eye yourself." (Laini Taylor - Muse of Nightmares)

Life doles out enough grief without you willfully adding more as a form of self-punishment. You don't have to wallow in it and invite it to prolong its stay in your heart.

• "I keep dragging around what's bringing me down / If I just let go, I'd be set free" (Linkin Park/Kiiara - Heavy)
• "All the broken hearts in the world still beat / Let's not make it harder than it has to be" (Ingrid Michaelson - Girls Chase Boys)
• "All my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it." (Madeline Miller - Circe)
• "I'd been stoking the most negative parts of myself, caught up in the notion that everything was unfair and then assiduously, like a Harvard-trained lawyer, collecting evidence to feed that hypothesis. I now tried out a new hypothesis: It was possible that I was more in charge of my happiness than I was allowing myself to be." (Michelle Obama - Becoming)
• "Our creativity grows like sidewalk weeds out of the cracks between our pathologies - not from the pathologies themselves... I refuse to seek out suffering in the name of artistic authenticity." (Elizabeth Gilbert - Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)

Don't let hopelessness catch you in its spiral, telling you that where you are now is where you will remain forever. This is a self-fulling prophecy, a trap - and to believe such absolutes is a form of arrogance. You do not know what is to come.

• "Please keep in mind that whatever you're going through, this challenging time in your life is merely IN your life. It is not your whole life. So be sure to keep this slice of life in perspective and don't let it overwhelm you. Remember: nothing is everything. The part is not greater than the whole." (Karen Salmansohn)
• "Tone down the prophecies of doom and switch from panic mode to bewilderment. Panic is a form of hubris. It comes from the smug feeling that one knows exactly where the world is heading: down. Bewilderment is more humble and therefore more clear-sighted... Try telling yourself, 'Truth is, I just don't understand what's going on.'" (Yuval Noah Harari - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
• "Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will." (Suzy Kassem)
• "Just because something isn't happening for you right now doesn't mean that it will never happen." (Unknown)
• "In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all and it often comes with bitter agony. You may believe that you will never feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again." (Abraham Lincoln)

It is often easier to fall for that trap of depression than it is to remain hopeful - but just because something is easy does not mean it is the best course.

• "There will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)
• "He had been broken and reassembled as a shell, only then to do the bravest thing of all: He had kept on living, though there are easier paths to take." (Laini Taylor - Strange the Dreamer)
• "Dying is easy - living is harder" (Hamilton Soundtrack - Right Hand Man)
• "We must try not to sink beneath our anguish, but battle on." (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)
• "Don't squander joy. We can't prepare for tragedy and loss. When we turn every opportunity to feel joy into a test drive for despair, we actually diminish our resilience. Every time we allow ourselves to lean into joy and give in to those moments, we build resilience and we cultivate hope." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it." (Tori Amos)

Faith is fuel, keeping you moving through long stretches of desert. Belief in the future, in a light you cannot see, is not foolishness, but bravery.

• "You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step." (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
• "You need a leap of faith to leave your old life behind. True metamorphosis doesn't come with flowcharts." (David Mitchell - Bone Clocks)
• "That's what faith is, isn't it? Following the music when we don't hear it." (Francisco X. Stork - Marcelo in the Real World)

Believe in yourself. Forgive yourself. Be kind to yourself.

• "Never apologize, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time that you were given." (Elizabeth Gilbert - Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
• "Cultivate the courage to be imperfect and self-compassionate. Perfectionism is not the path that leads us to our gifts and to our sense of purpose; it is a hazardous detour... Our worthiness, that core belief that we are enough, comes only when we own our stories (even the messy ones)." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "Even when it's not pretty or perfect. Even when it's more real than you want it to be. Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own." (Michelle Obama - Becoming)
• "We have to be willing to give ourselves a break and appreciate the beauty of our cracks and imperfections. To be kinder and gentler with ourselves and each other. To talk to ourselves the same way we'd talk to someone we care about." (Brene Brown - Daring Greatly)
• "You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." (Buddha)

There are things that are going to be outside your control. Understanding that is not an admission of failure, but an important step toward acceptance.

• "Control is a drug, and we are all hooked, whether or not we truly believe that we can master the future with our words and attitudes. The entire motivational-speaking industry rests on the assumption that you can have what you want, you can be what you want... [and that] there is a hidden logic to this seeming chaos... [But] nothing human or divine will map out this life, this life that has been more painful than I could have imagined. More beautiful than I could have imagined." (Kate Bowler - Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved)
• "Someday it might make sense to you - why you needed to go through this botched-up mess in order to land in a better place. Or maybe it will never make sense. So be it. Move on anyway." (Elizabeth Gilbert - Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
• "'It is not fair' and 'It cannot be' are two different things." (Madeline Miller - Circe)
• "Fairness is one of the most compelling claims of the American Dream, a vision of success propelled by hard work, determination, and maybe the occasional pair of bootstraps... In a world of fair, nothing clung to can ever slip away... Give up that little piece of the American Dream that says 'You are limitless'. Everything is not possible." (Kate Bowler - Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved)

But just because some things are uncontrollable does not mean everything is. Control what you can. Even when you are swimming in uncertainty, there is always something you can do. You can try to enjoy today.

• "We are never so wise as when we live in this moment." (Paul Kalanithi - When Breath Becomes Air)
• "Do not save this for tomorrow / Embrace the past and you can live for now / This is the new year / A new beginning" (A Great Big World - This is the New Year)
• "There's only now / There's only here/ Give in to love / Or live in fear / No other path / No other way / No day but today" (Rent Soundtrack - Another Day)

Be grateful for where you are right now. If your lungs are still breathing, your heart still beating, you have at least two things to marvel at.

• "A rainy day is better than no day." (Rachel Simon - The Story of Beautiful Girl)
• "Even if I'm dying, until I actually die, I am still living." (Paul Kalanithi - When Breath Becomes Air)
• "Live unburdened. Live free. Live without forevers that don't always come... The water is rising and levees may break and it will sweep us all away. But until then, I am here." (Kate Bowler - Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved)
• "Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now / Look at where you are / Look at where you started / The fact that you're alive is a miracle / Just stay alive, that would be enough" (Hamilton Soundtrack - That Would Be Enough)
• "Aging is a fucking privilege." (Kate Bowler - Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved)
• "It doesn't mean that it does not hurt. It doesn't mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive." (Madeline Miller - Circe)

Remember: if the bad and good are permanently tied up in each other, that means good times are also inevitable. Good times are coming. You will get through this. This too shall pass.

• "If life didn't change, it wouldn't be life, it'd be a photograph." (David Mitchell - Bone Clocks)
• "Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise." (Victor Hugo)
• "It's been a long cold lonely winter / It feels like years since it's been here... Here comes the sun / Here comes the sun, and I say / It's alright" (The Beatles - Here Comes the Sun)
• "All will be well / You can ask me how but only time will tell" (Gabe Dixon Band - All Will Be Well)
• "This feeling will pass. This workload will pass. These people will pass. This moment will pass. This fatigue will pass." (Lin-Manuel Miranda - Gmorning Gnight)
• "It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small / And the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all" (Frozen Soundtrack - Let it Go)
• "Pain will come with time, but time will heal the pain." (Anthony Liccione)

Letting go of the comfort of grieving can be difficult. But you are capable of accomplishing this final hurdle in moving on. Just because something is gone does not mean it will be forgotten.

• "I wanna let go but there's comfort in the panic" (Linkin Park/Kiiara - Heavy)
• "The brain is built to forget things as we continue to live; memories are meant to fade and disintegrate and sharp edges become blunt; the pain of letting go of grief is just as painful or even more painful than the grief itself. It means goodbye." (Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows)
• "This is what I know about loss: It doesn't get better. You just get (somewhat) used to it." (Jennifer Niven - Holding Up the Universe)
• "You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly in times of great trouble?" (J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
• "Nothing's really left or loss without a trace / Nothing's gone forever - only out of place... Maybe all you're missing lives inside of you" (Mary Poppins Returns - Where Lost Things Go)

I love you and I believe in you.

Love, Andrea

The Books of David Mitchell

Last month, I posted a series of my favorite quotes from David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas, connecting his words to my recent set of six acrylic paintings. In that post, I mentioned that I was in the process of reading through all his novels in chronological order by publication date, and that I would write another post when I was finished, compiling some of my favorite ideas and quotes from his oeuvre. Today is that post.

After months of reading and rereading (many of his books I had read before, but not all of them), I finally finished Slade House a few weeks ago. And now I'm finally getting around to reflecting on his "David Mitchell universe" as a whole.

My favorite Mitchell book is, obviously, Cloud Atlas. Not only do I find his characters in that book particularly compelling/relatable; I also prefer the explanation given in that book for how souls can connect throughout time. This connection is mystical/spiritual in nature, not overt, and rather inexplicable. It creeps up in moments of deja vu, or in the process of living a creative life. Some characters feel connected to each other intuitively, or even seem to remember things that didn't happen to them - things that might have happened in a past life, but not in the one they are living. Some recognize these moments of deja vu and interpret them as reincarnation - not "proof" of its existence, per se, but enough to warrant contemplation of the possibility. Still other characters do not explicitly feel like they are a reincarnation; they have no specific memories. And yet, they too are connected to other characters, even though they may never realize it. They read their diaries, listen to their compositions, read their manuscripts, watch their movies, or learn of them in history books, revering what they do not understand and worshipping them as gods.

I don't know if "souls" are truly reincarnated or not, and in any case there is hardly a way to prove definitively either way. But humans are able to feel inexplicable kinship with one another, and we do pass down bits of ourselves (our feelings, our experiences, our ideas) in creative works we produce and the legacy we leave behind. (Of course I want to believe that is true. I am an artist and a writer; I make things in the hopes that the things I make will connect with people, both now and in the future. I want to leave a "mark" on the world that will outlive my mortal body.)

And it is precisely this idea of intuitive connection and passing down creative works to future generations that Cloud Atlas embodies so well - which is why I love it so much. It feels real. It is something that I could buy happening to our world.

In contrast, Mitchell's other books that deal with the idea of a soul take a more "science fiction" approach (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Bone Clocks, and Slade House). Without giving too much away, these books create a world in which (some) people are perfectly aware of their souls and the souls living in other people, and steps are made to try to ensure immortality by using this soul-knowledge to their advantage. There is a behind the scenes "war" in which people nurture themselves at the expense of others, and others do their damnedest to stop them.

It's an exciting story, to be sure - and certainly seems to be the way Mitchell is going for future books, given that his last three books all deal, at least partly, with this idea. But it is decidedly different than the more believable, more relatable, more mystical, and - I think - more fascinating way that souls and people interact in Cloud Atlas.

That said, there is something to be gotten out of each of his books - even the ones that don't seem to touch on the idea of a soul/reincarnation. Here are some of my favorite quotes from each of his books:

[WARNING: MILD SPOILERS AHEAD.]

---

Ghostwritten (1999)

"We abdicate certain freedoms, and in return we get civilization."

"All these people, flyovers, cars, walkways, subways, offices, tower blocks, power cables, pipes, apartments, it all adds up to a lot of weight. You have to do something to stop yourself caving in, or you just become a piece of flotsam or an ant in a tunnel...You have to make your place inside your head."

"It's better to fight and lose than not fight and suffer, because even if you fight and lose your spirit emerges intact."

"The her that lived in her looked out through her eyes, through my eyes, and at the me that lives in me."

"For a moment I had an odd sensation of being in a story that someone was writing."

"I wonder if computers ever dream of humans."

"She didn't come in the dramatic way they do in movies. Nothing was hurled across the room, no ghosts in the machine, no silly messages typed on my computer or spelled out with fridge magnet letters. Nothing like Poltergeist or The Exorcist. More like a medical condition, that, while terminal, grows in such small increments that it is impossible to diagnose until too late."

"I'm sorry, but I don't have any spare time to give you."

"I'm this person, I'm this person, I'm that person, I'm that person too."

"Now that I'm dying again I recognize the signs."

"The Holy Mountain didn't care about the stupid world of men."

"'The world's gone mad,' I said. 'Again.' 'And it will right itself,' said my Tree. 'Again.'"

"Kindness always make me weep. I don't know why."

"I added 'writers' to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up."

"With the intuition of an old dying woman, I know she isn't telling the whole truth. With the certainty of an old dying woman, I know it's not the truth that much matters."

"It is so much easier to destroy than it is to re-create."

"I have only one fear: to be inhabiting a human at the moment of death."

"There's no future in stories...Stories are things of the past, things for museums."

"I am my mind - do I have a mind I don't know about within my mind, like humans?...How do I know that there aren't noncorpa living within me, controlling my actions? Like a virus within a bacteria? Surely I would know. But that's exactly what humans think."

"Everything is about wanting."

"It's a very special talent that men have, to possess seeing eyes yet be so blind."

"But what if the rats happened to like being in the maze?"

"Does chance or fate control our lives? Well, the answer is as relative as time. If you're in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you're reading, it's fate all the way."

"The act of memory is an act of ghostwriting."

"We're all ghostwriters, my boy. And it's not just our memories. Our actions, too. We all think we're in control of our own lives, but really they're pre-ghostwritten by forces around us."

"Anyone can predict effects from a given cause."

"Memories are their own descendants masquerading as the ancestors of the present."

"Even time is not immune to time."

"In five hundred years we are going to be either extinct, or...something better."

"The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed."

"Disbelieving the reality under your feet gives you a license to print your own."

"History is made of arbitrary choices."

"Information is control."

"Will my soul find a path out of these tunnels?"

---

Number9Dream (2003)

"A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it."

"Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Dreams are beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk awhile with the still are."

"Maybe the meaning of life lies in looking for it."

"Your turn has come to sift through the dreck of humanity for rare specks of originality."

"Human beings despise what is beautiful and good, and seek to destroy the things they need the most."

"The body is the outermost layer of the mind."

"I forget that other people in the world have broken parts, too."

"During those nine pouched-up months, what do babies imagine? Gills, swamps, battlefields? To people in wombs, what is imagined and what is real must be one and the same."

"People prefer loneliness to harmony."

---

Cloud Atlas (2004)

(For quotes from Cloud Atlas see my previous post.)

---

Black Swan Green (2006)

"Adults can't be expected to understand."

"Games and sports're really about humiliating your enemies."

"It's not that I'll die that bothers me. It's that I'll be the last one."

"Dead things show you what you'll be too one day."

"Mentioning my stammer makes it realler."

"Try to will it out of existence, it'll just will itself back stronger."

"Identify a demand, handle its supply, make your customers grateful, kill off the opposition."

"Human beings needs to watch out for reasonless niceness too. It's never reasonless and its reason's not usually nice."

"The earth's a door, if you press your ear against it."

"War's an auction where whoever can pay the most in damage and still be standing wins."

"How can the world just go on, as if none of this is happening?"

"War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it's a lottery."

"Wars do not simply appear from nowhere. Wars come, over a long period of time, and believe me, there is always plenty of blame to be shared out between all those who failed to prevents its bloody arrival."

"I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right."

"Prettiness often papers over nastiness."

"Often I think boys don't become men. Boys just get papier-mached inside a man's mask. Sometimes you can tell the boy is still in there."

"Isn't no god better than one who does that to people?"

"The world unmakes stuff faster than people can make it."

"If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, 'When you're ready.'"

"Beauty is not excellence. Beauty is distraction, beauty is cosmetics, beauty is ultimately fatigue."

"Your potter has made the vase, yes, but has not made the beauty. Only an object where beauty resides. Until the vase is dropped and breaks. Who is the ultimate fate of every vase."

"If you are not truthful to the world about who and what you are, your art will stink of falseness."

"Truth is everywhere, like seeds of trees; even deceits contain elements of truth. But the eye is clouded by the quotidian, by prejudice, by worryings, scandal, predation, passion, ennui, and, worst, television."

"Music's a wood you walk through."

"Speaking one language only is prison."

"Magnets don't need to understand magnetism."

"Will I be some kid's dad one day? Are any future people lurking deep inside mine?"

"People're a nestful of needs."

"Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty."

"Shunning one hopeless battle is not an act of cowardice."

"Questions aren't questions. Questions're bullets."

"The boy could preach till he's purple. They'd not believe him. They'd not want to believe him."

"Courage is being scared shitless but doing it anyway."

"Is a secret a secret if it isn't true?...A secret needs a human agency to know it, or at least write it down. A holder. A keeper."

"You think you are in charge of the secret, but isn't it the secret who's actually using you? S'pose lunatics mold their doctors more than doctors mold their lunatics?"

"Dancing's like walking down a busy high street or millions of other things. You're absolutely fine as long as you don't think about it."

"Dancers think they're in charge but they're obeying ancient orders."

"But once a lemon meringue's cut, no amount of tears can make it whole."

"If consequences of consequences of consequences of what you do're your fault too, you'd never leave your house."

---

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)

"A sailor's heart's the sea's plaything, eh?"

"The world is composed of people who are convinced of it."

"Immortality comes at a steep price."

"Respect, he thinks, cannot be commanded from on high."

"Your own descendants yet unborn beg you to make the correct choice at this hour."

"Every seat of power in the empire is divided, and thereby neutered."

"Jacob finds himself as little able to evade the man's gaze as a book can, of its own volition, evade the scrutiny of a reader."

"Mortification...requires at least a little pride."

"What if people make bad choice and president is bad man?"

"The fairer sex can show as much resilience as the uglier one."

"When shaving, a man rereads his truest memoir."

"What sort of gift is it that the giver doesn't offer until he wants something from the intended recipient?"

"Power has an unpleasant taste."

"We must guard ourselves against our protectors."

"To doubt the soul would strike me as peculiar."

"But mine is the true faith...Whilst yours is idolatry."

"This is longest bridge you ever cross, because this bridge go between two worlds."

"To not say 'no' is to half say 'yes.'"

"High office, as you shall one day discover, distances one from one's men."

"It's a man's conduct that God is interested in, not the circumstances of his birth."

"What man ain't the honestest cove in his own eyes?...'Tain't good intentions what paves the road to hell: it's self-justifyin's."

"A tidy metaphor does not make a wrong thing right."

"The ladybird believes she is on a momentous journey, but she is going nowhere."

"I wish spoken words could be captured and kept in a locket."

"Creation unfolds around us, despite us, and through us, at the speed of days and nights, and we like to call it 'love.'"

"To list and name people is to subjugate them."

"Slavery may be an injustice to some...but no one can deny that all empires are founded upon the institution."

"The soul is a verb. Not a noun."

"A carelessly tossed stone can sometimes results in a rock fall."

"Details beget facts, and facts, judiciously sent forth, become assassins."

"Expensive habit is honesty. Loyalty ain't a simple matter."

"The scarcity of facts leaves holes where rumors breed."

"The present is a battleground...where rival what-ifs compete to become the future 'what is.'"

"For what is it that directs the minds of the powerful? The answer is 'belief.'... Power is informed by belief that this path, and not another, must be followed."

"Self-pity is a noose dangling from a rafter."

"The belly craves food, the tongue craves water, the heart craves love, and the mind craves stories."

"Whatever a man is busy with, that is what, or whom, he values."

"Isolation, ingenuity, power...fear. These achieve most ends."

"It is not superstition but reason that concludes the realm of knowledge is finite and that the brain and the soul are discrete entities."

"Your soul knows what your mind is too knowledgeable to understand."

"The mind has a mind of its own. It shows us pictures. Pictures of the past, and the might-one-day-be."

"My true name I tell nobody, so nobody can steal my name."

"Why must all things go around in stupid circles?"

"If only human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks. If only this world was a clean board of lines and intersections. If only time was a sequence of considered moves and not a chaos of slippages and blunders."

"Admission of weakness is a weakness."

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love."

"The easiest way to control others is to give them the illusion of free will."

"The truth of a myth...is not its words but its patterns."

"One must be wary of understanding one's enemy, lest one becomes him."

"Nobody ever died for a flag, only what the flag symbolizes."

"This world contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself."

"The purest believers are the truest monsters."

"A great teacher attains immortality in his students."

---

The Bone Clocks (2014)

"Promise me you'll memorize the path through it, so if you ever needed to, you could navigate it in the darkness. Please."

"The brain could be an illogical place."

"People are icebergs, with just a bit you can see and loads you can't."

"Pity is a form of abuse."

"What if...what if heave is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to you for no reason, or...S'pose heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging their forever, but more like...like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snitches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or...upstairs windows when you're lost..."

"Psychologists say there's a second umbilical cord, an invisible one, an emotional one, which ties you to your parents for the whole time you're a kid. Then, one day, you have a row with your mum if you're a girl, or your dad if you're a boy, and that argument cuts your second cord. Then, and only then, are you ready to go off into the big wide world and be an adult on your own terms."

"Perhaps daymares are like cancer, which goes away and comes back when you think you're all clear."

"Capitalism eats itself. When it can't feed the millions it spits out, no amount of lies or brutality will save it."

"Being born's a hell of a lottery."

"Hobbies are for pleasure, but rituals keep you going."

"When you know your memory's been monkeyed around with once, how can you ever be sure of any memory again?"

"You make a list, see. It's called 'All the Things I'll Never, Ever Do to Get By.' The list stays exactly the same, but its name changes to 'All the Things I've Had to Do to Get By.'"

"I think about pinball, and how being a kid's like being shot up the firing lane and there's no veering left or right; you're just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like when you're sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, suddenly there's a thousand different paths you can take, some amazing, others not. Tiny little differences in angles and speed'll totally alter what happens to you later..."

"Victims aren't cowards. Outsiders, like, they never have a clue how brave you have to be just to carry on."

"Power is the ability to make someone do what they otherwise wouldn't, or deter them from doing what they otherwise would."

"Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed. Power is a visitor to, not a possession of, those it empowers. The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long-term side effects. Power is crack cocaine for your ego and battery acid for your soul."

"Mortality is inscribed in your cellular structure, and you say you're not ill?"

"When civilization shuts up shop, a gun'll be worth any number of university degrees."

"You'd think old age was a criminal offense, not a destination we're all heading to."

"Whatever I do with my life, however much power, wealth, experience, knowledge, or beauty I'll accrue, I, too, will end up like this vulnerable old man."

"Coupling is frenzy; decoupling is farce."

"Persuasion is not about force; it's about showing a person a door, and making him or her desperate to open it."

"Perhaps this will just be one of life's dangly plot lines that one never revisits."

"Human beings are walking bundles of cravings. Cravings for food, water, shelter, warmth; sex and companionship; status, a tribe to belong to; kicks, control, purpose; and so on, all the way down to chocolate-brown bathroom suites. Love is one way to satisfy some of those cravings. But love's not just the drug; it's also the dealer. Love wants love in return."

"We're all of different things at different times."

"Lust wants, does the obvious, and pads back into the forest. Love is greedier. Love wants round-the-clock care; protection; rings, vows, joint accounts; scented candles on birthdays; life insurance. Babies. Love's a dictator."

"People are superb at not thinking about awkward truths."

"You only value something if you know it'll end."

"You need a leap of faith to leave your old life behind. True metamorphosis doesn't come with flowcharts."

"If an atrocity isn't written about, it stops existing when the last witnesses die."

"When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I'd be one day to look inside it."

"Wrong turns teach us the right way."

"God is willing to trust us with the small print."

"It's not just that you get old and your kids leave; it's that the world zooms away and leaves you hankering for whatever decade you felt most comfy in."

"However much you love them, your own children are only ever on loan."

"We all of us have less time than we think."

"Nonfiction that smells like fiction is neither."

"Bury the hatchet. Hatchets don't work on ghosts. They cannot hear you. You only end up hatcheting yourself."

"Men marry women hoping they'll never change. Women marry men hoping they will. Both parties are disappointed."

"The secret of happiness is to ignore your reflection in mirrors once you're over forty."

"Modesty is Vanity's craftier stepbrother."

"When I remember my mother, am I remembering her, or just memories of her?"

"For most digital-age writers, writing is rewriting. We grope, cut, block, paste, and twitch, panning for gold onscreen by deleting bucketloads of crap."

"Even if a poet sets out to invent a new poetics, he or she can only react against what's already there."

"Writers don't write in a void."

"A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder. Your art feeds on you, your soul, and yes, to a degree, your sanity."

"Are we mutants? Have we evolved this way? O are we designed? Designed by whom? Why did the designer go to such elaborate lengths, only to vacate the stage and leave us wondering why we exist? For entertainment? For perversity? For a joke? To judge us?"

"Some truths are inadmissible in the court of the sane."

"Attaining immortality is easier than controlling its terms and conditions."

"One cannot cross the same river twice."

"Each resurrection is a lottery of longitudes, latitudes, and demography."

"Yes, I am only a pawn, but a game of chess may hinge upon the conduct of a single pawn."

"If you love and are loved, whatever you do affects others."

"The Script loves foreshadow."

"The future looks a lot like the past."

"All great cities do and must revert to jungle, tundra, or tidal flats, if you wait long enough, and I should know."

"I'd rather trust my memory than my eyes."

"We live on, as long as there are people to live on in."

"If you could reason with religious people, there wouldn't be any religious people."

"There is no God but the one we dream up."

"If you can't trust your mind anymore, you're mentally homeless."

"Change is sort of hardwired into the world."

"If life didn't change, it wouldn't be life."

"The 'natural order of things' is entirely man-made."

"Civilization's like the economy, or Tinkerbell: If people stop believing it's real, it dies."

---

Slade House (2015)

"My question falls down a deep well with no bottom, and I forget what I've forgotten."

"Mrs. Todds my English teacher gives an automatic F if anyone ever writes 'I woke up and it was all a dream' at the end of a story. She says it violates the deal between reader and writer, that it's a cop-out, it's the Boy Who Cried Wolf. But every single morning we really do wake up and it really was all a dream."

"Dream-people always say they're real, so pardon me for not believing you."

"It can't hold forever and it won't."

"People are masks, with masks under those masks, and masks under those, and down you go."

"Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable hemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed."

"Once you've been a psychiatric patient, no one ever gives you the benefit of the doubt again. Easier to fix a bad credit rating than a bad credibility rating."

"Truth has this habit of changing after the fact, don't you find?"

"Death's life's only guarantee, yes?"

"In war, ends justify means. War is ends justifying means."

"Memory's a slippery eel at the best of times."

"One percent is still...too many."

Why on earth should that mean that it isn't real?

This post is going to be a continuation of yesterday's post about mind-body dualism, so you may want to start there if you haven't read it yet.

As I said yesterday, though part of me is swayed by the scientific proof of monism - the idea that everything is built out of one category of substance (atoms, molecules, chemicals, cells) - I am ultimately too enamored with the idea of dualism to suspend belief that there is a second, incorporeal substance also at play in nature. We are not just bodies, but bodies and minds (or souls, depending on how you want to label it).

I acknowledge that I am, to some extent, governed by my chemicals and hormones and neurons and all of the other building blocks that create and multiply and manipulate my cells, or communicate between them. I even understand that when I dream at night I am in actuality at the mercy of coincidences and firing neurons; that what I choose to interpret as a story, with colors and faces and emotions and conflict and resolution, is not created or influenced by a separate substance (my mind, my soul, my intuition, creativity, inspiration, a collective unconscious I'm tapping into, or anything spiritual like that) but by the same category that maintains my blood circulation and digestive tract: Atoms. Molecules. Things that science can observe and quantify and explain (or are working toward observing, quantifying, and explaining).

But I care about those stories I dream, or the stories I come up with in the daytime and attempt to put to paper, or the subjects I want to draw or paint - and to write or create art the way I want to, I feel like it diminishes it to think of it through the lens of monism.

Sure, I am able to see color because of the way my eyes work and the cells that make up my eyes; I am able to hold a paintbrush because of the cells in my hand; I am able to retain muscle memory and things I've practiced and learned in school for the best techniques to use because of the cells in my brain. And to some people - the scientifically minded, the monists - this is more than enough, and they can find excitement and inspiration in the idea that everything comes down to essentially one thing, or that everything is born from essentially one thing, and that any differences we see - at the molecular or macro level - are just different rearrangements of the same basic substance.

Good for them! I'm not knocking monism. It's just not how I think of things, and I don't see the value (and in fact see negative consequences) in retraining myself to think of the world that way. I could persuade myself if I really wanted to. I definitely see the reasoning and the merits. But I don't think it matters to my life, and because it is not my gut reaction, I fear that it would take away something of who I am to try to dissuade myself of my belief in dualism.

I am an artist, and a writer. I like looking at art, and reading books. I like writing poetry. I like listening to music. I like being creative. I like thinking of myself as a body and a soul, and other people as a body and a soul. I like imagining that there is this creativity or inspiration that ebbs and flows and visits us and abandons us and takes us on journeys and sets our hearts on fire. I like dreaming; I like trying to influence my dreams in the moment of the dreaming, and I like interpreting them after the fact. I like sitting around and thinking and philosophizing. I like asking 'what ifs'.

I like thinking of my emotions, my mood, my intuition, my dreams, my creativity, my art, my writing, as a separate entity. Something to conquer or challenge or accept or adore or avoid or manipulate or mold or cherish or abhor. Something that is unique to me, but also something that is similar to what everyone else has and experiences - a collective pool that we all dip our toes into once and awhile, and dive into even rarer still. Something that is sometimes out of our control - which is frustrating at times but beneficial at other times. Something that is separate from my physical body and will exist in some form after my body dies.

I don't think my soul will go to heaven or hell because I don't think those are actual places. But I am open the idea of reincarnation. I like the idea of the ancient goddess, where we are all birthed from the same womb, live physical lives, and then are returned to that sacred womb to be reborn into another life (with or without knowledge of previous lives). That doesn't mean I believe in a goddess, or a specific womb that exists. I just like the imagery of it. The Neo-Platonists had a similar idea - this Oneness that we all come from and return to. It's actually almost monist sounding, right? We are all essentially the same thing, born from the same substance, made of the same substance, and return to that substance when we return. But I think of it in a dualist way.

There's this spiritual substance (spirit, soul, mind, unconsciousness, etc.) - let's just call it Substance 1 for the sake of simplicity. And this substance is unquantifiable and unidentifiable and really hard to understand or know or label - because that's kind of the point of it. We can only feel it - in our guts, in our hearts, in our minds. We can't touch it with our hands, or see it or hear it or taste it or smell it or observe it in any way. It's extrasensory.

I like to imagine that we are that substance, at our cores. If our bodies ever ceased to exist, or if we were in a transition state between bodies, we would still be Substance 1. It's our emotions, our collective unconscious, the stuff of dreams, our creativity, our childish sense of wonder, our pleasure, our pain, etc. When we are on earth it is encased in a body, which is a different substance (Substance 2). It has to be a different entity, because it can be observed with our physical senses. We can see and feel and taste it. We can study it under a microscope. It gets hurt or sick, and we watch it heal (or not heal). It is observable, in a real, quantifiable way. It can be categorized and labeled. It can (more or less) be understood.

So we start as Substance 1 and end as Substance 1 (if we do indeed end). We still have access to Substance 1 while we are encased in Substance 2 (our bodies), because we are always Substance 1, whether or not we are at the moment connected to Substance 2.

Of course, at any given moment we can understand, we are connected to Substance 2, because that's the only way we can understand or acknowledge or interpret or observe things at all. I have no proof that Substance 1 exists before/after/outside Substance 2 at all. Perhaps it doesn't. I like to think it does, but it hardly matters (to me) if it actually does or not. I would not act differently in this life if I knew for certain that my soul would or would not extend past by body's life, so it makes no difference.

The point is, that I am drawn to thinking of myself this way, for better or worse. It is so engrained in me to believe that there is some essence to me that is more than just the sum of my bodily parts that I have to think it is a belief I would hold dear regardless of whether or not I had been brought up Christian and taught to believe that we all have souls and which go to Heaven or Hell when our bodies die. I was drawn to color and art from a young age. I loved stories and reading. I have always been drawn to fantasy. I have always put more significance on my mind than my body. It didn't matter what was happening in "the real world" if I had another world I could escape to in my mind.

And I think that, is essentially, why I would really have to talk myself into monism. Because I like Substance 1 better; I could never discard it in favor of Substance 2. And it doesn't make sense to me believe there isn't a Substance 2 - indeed, I would be way too scared to pretend Substance 1 is the only substance. While I like Substance 1, I also often keep my distance from it. It's unreliable. It's mysterious. To believe only in Substance 1 (and thus ignore the "real" physical world) would be to lose all control, lose anything tangible to grab onto, and, essentially, to go insane.

So Substance 2 must exist - it is the rock in the flowing stream of Substance 1, the tangible, sturdy, steady thing to grab onto. And I want Substance 1 to exist - because it's the flowing stream, and more interesting. And so I am a dualist.

But I also call myself an "atheist."

Being an "atheist" doesn't mean I'm not spiritual, in my own way. It doesn't mean I don't like sitting around philosophizing. It doesn't mean I don't believe in something by faith alone. The "something" that I believe in through faith alone, however, is not capital-G God, nor any other god or gods of any organized religion on this planet. There is no Creator. There is no Destiny. There is the Human Experience, and the Soul, and the Collective Unconscious, or something along those lines - but I vacillate between whether or not I think this other Force, whatever it is, has any sort of semblance of control over me and my actions, or even any understanding of me, or anyone else, or itself. Perhaps it is just Nature, going through its cycles as it does; and I am just a part of it, a cog in its incognizant machine.

I even (as you can see with these last two blog posts), debate with myself on the issue of my dualism. Do I actually believe there are two substances - mind and body - or do I just really want there to be two substances, because it's a more interesting story, and one that I am immediately drawn to?

So I call myself an atheist because I do not align with any modern religion or its beliefs, and I do not one anyone to get the impression that I do, or that I could be persuaded to. Calling myself an agnostic, I think, is not strong enough to get this point across. But really I would identify myself more as an apatheist - because not only do I not believe in god, but it really doesn't matter to my daily life if god does or does not exist - or even if there are one or two categories of substances in the world.

From the Wikipedia article, Apatheism

I like thinking about such things in the abstract, but have no real motivation to come to any sort of concrete conclusion. I'm fine with sitting in the corner and imagining the world I want to imagine, with its mind and body separation. It suits me. It doesn't really matter if it's "real" or "true" or not, because it's true to me. And even if someone could prove to me that God exists (or doesn't exist), or that everything I hold dear about my "essence" is really just nothing more than neurons firing in my brain or the chemicals and hormones in my body fluctuating their levels to influence my emotions or mood - it wouldn't matter. I would still make art. I would still feel things. I would still write. I would still go on pretending that what is in my mind is important and real - because that's what makes me feel like me, and I think it's what makes me good at the art and writing I do.

I've rambled on about all this long enough. I'll end here with a favorite quote by J.K. Rowling:

Mind & Body

I'm not an expert on philosophy by any means.

I took one "Intro to Philosophy" course in college, which built on the pretty solid foundation I acquired with my high school humanities classes. I also took a course that was cross-listed between the Women and Gender's Studies department and the Philosophy department; it focused primarily on philosophical manifestos written by second-wave feminists (with the occasional first- and third-waver thrown in) on the topics of privilege and oppression, as they relate to gender. Since college, I've read a few books on philosophy - both as research for the novel(s) I've been writing and as a sort of general interest project. These have been mostly compilations of Major Points philosophers have made (as explained by contemporary philosophers or humanities professors who know how to write clearly and concisely), and not the actual, historical texts that, while I'm sure offer more insight and nuance, also require a lot more brain power to parsing and comprehending than I have time to devote.

So in bringing up one of the Big Topics philosophers have debated for today's post, I'm not trying to convince you, or persuade you, or educate you - if you want to know what the Famous Philosophers have said on such things, you're best doing the research and reading yourself. I'm only explaining what I believe - because it "feels right" to me.

From Wikipedia

The debate is this - are there two types of substances in the world (body and mind, or body and soul, depending on how you want to phrase it), or is there only one substance?

The "body" would be anything we can see or understand in this physical world that we live in. Our physical bodies, with its hands and feet and brain, made up of atoms and molecules. The physical building blocks of life, and the things that we interact with everyday.

The "mind" or "soul" would be something unscientific and incorporeal.

Christianity defines this as our "soul" - the spirit that lives inside everyone, which persists before the body and after the body's demise. This is why murder is a sin - because you're not just killing cells, but cells that are (or were) attached (at least temporarily) to a unique, God-created soul. Christians also believe that this soul continues after the body dies - and goes either to hell or heaven (or purgatory), depending on deeds and misdeeds, what or who you believe in, and what sect of Christianity you're looking at.

Other religions and spiritual ways of thinking define this substance in other ways. Souls can be thought of as being reincarnated - inhabiting one body until that body dies, and then inhabiting another body in another life.

Some say that animals or plants also have such "souls" - and therefore certain animals (or all animals) are off-limits to farm, slaughter, and consume. Many vegetarians or vegans who choose their diets on moral grounds make such arguments.

Others might think of this incorporeal substance as something less connected to an individual person or animal, but something that just kind of floats around and inhabits each of us at different times. Intuition. Fate. Destiny. The ability to communicate in extrasensory ways (mind reading, ESP, etc). Creativity.

In her book "Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear," Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert talks about creativity and inspiration as kind of this mythical, spiritual thing. It gives us ideas and sometimes a passion to see that idea through, but it is up to us to take that opportunity when it comes, pursue other opportunities if an idea is not actively knocking on our door, and learn how to be creative without relying on inspiration to guide us every step of the way. Similar to an athlete or musician "being in the zone," artists and writers are capable of creating things they didn't think possible, things that sort of momentarily seize them and take them on a journey over which they have little or no control. But you don't find that "zone" without putting in lots of effort and practice and opening yourself up to such experiences, and you can't rely on that creative spark to always be around.

The ancient Romans thought of this as a "genius." A person was not a genius, he had a genius - a little elf or sprite or guide or fairy or however you want to think of it - who came around and helped occasionally. (Females didn't get geniuses... there was another word for their helper friends; but I don't remember it at the moment.) This would also fit under the idea of this "mind" or "soul" - some otherworldly spark that we can't see or ever fully understand, but that is there and occasionally able to be tapped into a bit, or connected to us.

Whether we have the ability to connect with such incorporeal things or whether we have to wait for those substances to hook up with us is a matter of belief - and would get into another question of Free Will vs. Determinism.

I would also like to point out that many (most) people who believe in some sort of incorporeal substance don't believe in all of those examples that I listed above (or others). Many would find the idea of creativity as a gremlin that gifts inspiration as sort of hokey. Many Christians can easily believe that they have a soul but that animals and plants do not (and are thus perfectly willing to eat all sorts of meat). Historically, there were many groups who even believed that not all humans had souls, or that not all humans had equal souls - that men were inherently created by God to be better than women, or for whites to be inherently smarter or more powerful than blacks or other races. Now, we think such things are ridiculous (racist, sexist, elitist, horrible), but that wasn't always the case. The idea of what this non-body substance might be vary vastly from culture to culture and person to person, as well as throughout time.

But a lot of people believe in something. They believe there is something out there - whether God or gods, Fate or Destiny or Fortune, a person's individual soul, or occasional creativity, or just some other underlying thing that connects all of us mystically/spiritually, like the Human Experience, or the Collective Unconscious, or whatever.

Then there are others who don't believe there is anything besides the body. That any emotions or moods we feel, any ideas we come up with or feel like we've been gifted, any extrasensory understanding we think we may possess, any uncontrollable Force that guides us or hurts us, whether indiscriminately or consciously and deliberately - all of these things are still the same substance. Dreams are just neurons firing in the brain. Religions are just systems based on stories we've created to explain we don't (yet) understand. Everything comes down to chemicals and molecules - how those atoms interact with one another to form plants, and animals, and humans, and human emotions and moods and inspiration and dreams. Pure science.

That is not to say that all scientists cast out all spirituality and believe that there is only one substance - the body. Some scientists are religious. Many undoubtedly believe in souls. Several even say that studying science has brought them to the conclusion that there must be something more - some Divine Creator who designed all of the intricate systems of cells and chemicals that are increasingly observable with the advent of new and better technology.

But pure science is, by definition, based only on that which can be observed or experimented with. Even if individual scientists may yet believe in another substance - mind, souls, spirits - the discipline as a whole does not give that idea much (if any) credence.

From Wikipedia

With the continued new technology that is being invented and perfected, I think this belief in only one substance (monism) is gaining steam. There is observable proof that drugs and medicines can alter the chemicals in our body and change our emotional state. Or give us purpose and direction and inspiration where depression or chronic pain or some other illness took it away. Or help us see an "alternate reality" or a "different plane of existence." Or increase our likelihood of nightmares and vivid dreams, just by increasing or decreasing the way our cells communicate in our brains or altering hormone imbalances. (I am not a scientist, so my terms/explanations may be off. But you catch my drift.)

Indeed, what proof is there (what proof can there be?) that another substance exists? The only thing that can be cited is that many humans feel like more than just a body - they feel like a soul, too. Many humans want or need to believe that part of themselves will transcend their bodily deaths, or that some things are out of their control and cannot be explained. And science can account for this, too - I'm sure some explanation can be crafted for while so many of us feel this to be true, something about neurons and chemicals and other things that I haven't studied and don't understand. Maybe we believe we're more than firing neurons because our firing neurons fire in such a way and light up the parts of our brains that have us believe that.

But I'm not a scientist. I'm an artist and a writer. I grew up Christian. And though I can shake the idea of God, and deny organized religion, I cannot shake the idea of a soul. I have to be more than just molecules. There has to be something about me that is unique and special that molecules could not recreate somewhere else, in someone else. It's perhaps egotistical to think, and very likely wrong. But the idea of dualism - two substances, the mind and the body, which work (or don't work) together in harmony and which are ruled (or rule) slightly different sets of laws - is too important to me, as a creative person, to give up.

Science may scoff, but many philosophers would agree with my assessment. There is a mind and a body. It is (to me) the more exciting and fun and desirable explanation, and it is (for now at least) the one I'm sticking with.

Twenty Years Ago

Today marks the twenty year anniversary of the death of my paternal grandfather.

The fact that it has been two decades literally blows me away. I had just turned seven when he died, and the time leading up to and immediately after his death are (understandably) formative memories of my childhood. I was in second grade at the time. I have very few memories from before my grandpa died; most my memorable life has happened since. Furthermore, this means my grandma has been a widow for twenty years. I can barely imagine being married for twenty years (my husband and I are just this year going to hit our five-year anniversary), and my grandma has already lived twenty years since her husband died, twenty years since the end of her marriage. It's just really hard for me to fathom.

My grandpa technically died of cancer (he had prostate cancer that spread to his kidneys), but as a kid I thought of it/it was described to me as "old age." He fought prostate cancer years before I was born and went into remission for something like fifteen years. When the second round of cancer came around, he was older. It got to different organs. Yeah, it was cancer - but it was the sum of all of the places the cancer inhabited. Bit by bit he got worse. His organs failed. It was "old age" because he died from an ailment associated with or made worse by aging. Plus, I thought of him as old. He was in his 70s. He was bald and gray. I was seven.

But my grandma has lived twenty years since her husband died of "old age." This is what really gets me. I guess it's the span of "old age" - that someone can be thought of as old at 70 and at 90, that I can literally live nearly my entire memorable life to date in the span of just part of someone's "old age." Life is long. The stages growing up are so short when you're little: baby, toddler, kid, preteen, teenager, young adult... And then you get to: Middle Age. Old Age. Those are long ass stages! You can get so much done in those stages! You have decades to work with. It's just really incredible, and it takes a major thought adjustment, I think, to realize: Hey, I'm 27 now. I'm legitimately an adult, I am entering the LONG ASS LIFE STAGES (LALS for short). Things aren't going to change so much anymore. I probably have more in common with 30-somethings and 40-somethings than I do with teenagers. My position in life is basically this for the next few decades, with only minor adjustments. I have TIME.

It's a relief, actually. Anything that I want to accomplish "as an adult" I have decades to work toward (baring unfortunate disaster). So how do I make the most of this time? What am I going to do with all of this?

My other grandmother is also still alive. My paternal grandmother is turning 89 this year and my maternal grandmother is turning 90. Her husband died sixteen years ago; at that time, my maternal grandmother decided to move into an independent living facility that was quite expensive. She in all honesty did not think she would be there long, so she didn't worry too much about the expense. Sixteen years later, she's still there and still (more or less) of the same level of health she was then. Sixteen years!

I don't want to presume that she feels like she's wasted those sixteen years - or even that I would feel like I'd wasted those years if I were her age. But where I am right now, at age 27, I can't imagine staying in one place for sixteen years and doing literally nothing out of the ordinary or accomplishing anything for sixteen years. Sixteen years is a LONG time. Living for sixteen years with the only goal being "stay alive"? Is that really living?

I want to make the most of my LALS. I don't want to look back on my life and be like, where did those sixteen years go? I did literally nothing notable.

I also don't want to have grown children and look back and say, the only thing I did in the last two decades is watch my children grow. Even though that is obviously notable, to raise kids and be a parent - children are going to grow whether you grow them or not. And to have done nothing else on the side, nothing else for myself - a job, a career, volunteering, a project, a goal, whatever - that would feel like such a waste. I don't want to say: "In the two decades of my child's life, wherein my child did everything and went through all those early life stages and grew so much - I did nothing but watch them. In two decades, I didn't grow myself at all."

My grandmothers living so long after their husbands passed away gives me great inspiration. Even in old age, we can have so much time left. We don't even know. We might think that's it, we're on the final lap now - and then that final lap lasts decades. And we're only living longer and longer as a species. It's incredible. It's daunting. What am I going to do with this much time? What am I going to do with myself? But it's also a relief. Life doesn't have to be rushed anymore, now that I'm out of those kid-stages. I have plenty of time to work with.

More Latin Quotations

I started posting some of these quotes yesterday, but there were just too many good ones, so I split it up into two posts. So here are some more of my favorite Latin quotations that I came across in researching for my novel (some of which made it into my novel(s) and many which probably won't):

Non est ad astra mollis e terries via - There is no easy way from the Earth to the stars. (Seneca the Younger)

Non nobis solum nati sumus ortusque nostri partem patria vindicat, partem amici - We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends have a share in us. (Cicero)

Nos numerus sumus et fruges consumere nati - We are but numbers, born to consume resources. (Horace)

Non omnia possumus omnes - We cannot all do everything. (Virgil, Eclogues)

Non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est - It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. (Seneca the Younger)

Non satis est puris versum perscribere verbis - Tis not sufficient to combine well-chosen words in a well-ordered line. (Horace)

Nullum esse librum tam malum, ut non aliqua parte prodesset - No book was so bad but that some good might be got out of it. (Pliny the Younger, repeating what his father, Pliny the Elder, used to say)

Nullumst iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius - Nothing is said that has not been said before. (Terence, Eunuchus)

Omnia fert aetas, animum quoque - Time bears away all things, even our minds. (Virgil, Ecologues)

Otium et reges prius et beatas perdidit urbes - Often has leisure ruined great kings and fine cities. (Catullus)

Quae fuit furum pati, meminisse dulce est - Things that were hard to bear are pleasant to remember. (Seneca the Younger)

Qui e nuce nucleum esse vult, frangat nucem - He who would eat the kernel must crack the shell. (Plautus, Curculio, I.1)

Quidquid multis peccatur inultum est - The sin of thousands always goes unpunished. (Lucan)

Rarum id quidem nihil enim aeque gratum est adeptis quam concupiscentibus - An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit. (Pliny the Younger)

Sapiens vivit quantum debet, non quantum potest - The wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can. (Seneca the Younger)

Satius est supervacus acire quam nihil - It is better to know useless things than nothing at all. (Seneca the Younger)

Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim - Learned or not, we shall write poems without distinction ("Fools also write").

-

What I love most about these quotes (and all of the research I ended up doing about Ancient Rome) is noting how little has changed between then and now, despite the passing of two millennia. Humans still ponder these same questions, repeat these same words, make the same mistakes, have the same insights, make the same arguments...

Even back then, they were saying that everything had already been said, that there was nothing new under the sun. And yet - it is new. Over and over again, it's new again. Just because someone already realized something two thousand years ago doesn't diminish the excitement we feel when we realize it again in our own lives in 2016.

I don't know - when I read quotes like this, it makes me feel really small/insignificant but at the same time an important, significant piece of a cyclical, multi-layered world. (Somehow those feelings aren't contradictory. They coexist rather peacefully.) And that's why I was drawn to do all this research in the first place.