Nick Cave on the Fragility of Life
Even in the whorl of our own personal tragedies, when the cosmos appears at its most chaotic and impartial, I have come to see the world, in its complexity, rearranging itself toward meaning.
NICK CAVE • Subscribe to The Red Hand Files
That is all we have, this moment with the world. It will not last, because nothing lasts. Entropy, mortality, extinction: the entire plan of the universe consists of losing, and no matter how much we find along the way, life amounts to a reverse savings account in which we are eventually robbed of everything. Our dreams and plans and jobs and knees... See more
Maria Popova • Losing Love, Finding Love, and Living with the Fragility of It All
Yufa and added
Life is fierce and difficult. There is no life we can live without being subject to grief, loss and heartbreak. Half of every conversation is mediated through disappearance. Thus, there is every reason to want to retreat from life, to carry torches that illuminate only our own view, to make enemies of life and of others, to hate what we cannot unde
... See moreDavid Whyte • David Whyte
rob hardy added
Indeed, your world can break down precisely because you live on after the death of everything you love. This “death” can be much more painful and fearful than the prospect of your own death, not least because it is a death that you have to survive. Hence, as long as you are attached to someone or something that you can lose, you are susceptible to
... See moreMartin Hägglund • This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom
The very notion of transience is fundamental to human experience. Yet death seems bad for us because it deprives us of what we instinctively want: permanence. We want to extend our projects into the future, at least for now, at least until this or that is completed, and so on for as long as we take interest in anything we do. Yet the very fuel that
... See moreDerren Brown • Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine
The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gat
... See moreDavid Whyte • Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
Toward the album’s end, “O Wow O Wow” seems to provide a response: The pain of feeling broken is ultimately an affirmation that our late loved ones still live on within us. The day the hurting stops is the day they’re truly dead. Wild God reminds us that joy and sorrow aren’t mutually exclusive states, they’re more like adjoining rooms in a house; ... See more