#196: What else is there?

After all, it is only in anticipation of sorrow that joy seems frivolous. We become so used to bracing for the next devastation, we don’t have time or emotional energy to rejoice. For some of us, this moves us to a permanent seriousness, always on guard against the evils of this world. Some of us even begin to believe we are not worthy of pleasure

frightening, dismal, discouraging; all that we have thought was ourself for many years is under attack.

I had reached the very tip of the last branch on this particular decision tree. There was no moving forward or sidestepping. I had two choices: go back from whence I came, or leap into the void ahead.

The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more—except his God.

I don’t want to hope for some good outcome that depends on a future that will never happen; nor do I want to fear that terrible future. I see hope as wishful thinking, and fear as its opposite: the nightmare of the future. I’m trying to avoid both those things in my life. Maybe that makes my message more difficult to swallow for many listeners and