Today Putin ordered troops into pro-Russian region of eastern Ukraine in the name of peacekeeping. Ukraine invaded. Then I saw the news of Dr. Paul Farmer. “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”
I remember once offering to an editor an article which began with a reference to the experience of last century. “Oh,” he said, “leave out the history and come to the present.” I felt like going to him over a thousand miles and taking him by the lapels and saying, “Dear, dear jackass! Don’t you understand that the past is the present; that without what was, nothing is? That, of the infinite dead, the living are but unimportant bits?...
Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them...
“People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience. The lady who only read books that improved her mind was taking a safe course - and a hopeless one....
The good and the bad are everywhere all the time. While reading stories and watching movies there are always heroes and villains in these endless dramas. There are always Don Quixote and Sancho. What am I? What are you? A mixture of good and bad. That’s all. What if we stop dividing us into black and white? One teaching of Budha is now and here. What does it mean? No regret and guilty for the past....