Living

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The Cost of Living

HELL AND EARTH

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power.

Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”

~Arundhati Roy, ‘The Cost of Living’

Posted by Hell and Earth.

Another of those of us seeking social justice and reasons. Ultimately it comes back to the why of it. Why are we here? What is our purpose? And the things that fascinate us and transform us along the way.

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Well then now & The Paradox of Living

I’m returning more to what is considered a day-to-day normal. That is I don’t look around me in a degree of oddness as if things don’t quite fit. That they don’t fit is not the issue, and in fact nothing is at issue. The only practical question would not be what but why. But that is a gift of age: that we quit asking why.

Those first nights in rehab when I couldn’t move, go anywhere, made more of an impression on me than I thought. You become that. And I had to live on the surface, in the center of my mind. Any of the edges would have entrapped me and they were many and dark. Interesting that I didn’t pray. And I didn’t invoke The Buddha, or The Christ, or even “the guys.” But then I didn’t seek help. I sought nothing. And then, for a while I became someone else.

So, to post from Belles-letters: