Zinn presents me with a different notion of victory and a different choice entirely. My real choice is between Team Cruelty (or Team Apathy or Team Selfishness or Team Indifference) and Team Wisdom, Courage, and Kindness.

We feel this doom because we are awake, at least partially awake. The more we wake up, the worse we feel. It’s so tempting to fall back to sleep. No wonder certain politicians hate the idea of being “woke.”

Doom is a kind of pre-traumatic stress disorder that arises when our old normal is deteriorating and no new normal has come into view. For our purposes, it isn’t a single catastrophic event at some point in the future. Instead, it is the emotional and intellectual experience shared by all who realize the dangerous future into which we are presently

Third is the meaning (or understanding) committee, often associated with the neocortex of the brain. It makes language possible and gives meaning to the word “meaning.” It enables me to talk to myself and observe myself. It integrates current awareness with memory of past experiences and with the ability to imagine future scenarios (as we did in th

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives—the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change—truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts. —Novelist Salman Rushdie

Contemplation is meeting all the reality you can bear.

“Do you have hope?” What can I say? Here’s what I’ll say going forward: It depends on how you define hope. Hope is complicated. But writing this book is helping me to see that even if hope fails, something bigger can replace it, and that is love.

“I had always seen things as most real or fundamental, and change was merely something that happened to them over time. I was coming to see change as most real and fundamental, and things were events that happen over time. Change became the constant in which things come and go, appear and disappear, form and fade away.”

You’ve probably never heard of the Plymouth Brethren, but if you’ve ever heard of “the Rapture,” you have our heritage to thank. (You’re very welcome.)