Reading while I _______.
I read things I hadn’t the chance to while pushing electrons around in organic chemistry class.
Inventors.
Ray Black was in prison, so we weren’t able to talk to him. I did some research on the Internet and found out that he was in prison because he murdered two kids after he raped them. There were also pictures of the dead kids, and even though I knew it would only hurt me to look at them, I did. I printed them out and put them in Stuff That Happened to Me, right after the picture of Jean-Pierre Haignerè, the French astronaut who had to be carried from his spacecraft after returning from the Mir space station, because gravity isn’t only what makes us fall, it’s what makes our muscles strong. I wrote a letter to Ray Black in prison, but I never got a response. Inside, I hoped he didn’t have anything to do with the key, although I couldn’t help inventing that it was for his jail cell.
Foer, Jonathan Safran (2006). Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
May 6, 2009—
I am now a sophomore in college. Holy cow, I still cannot believe that.
Stockholm Declaration, 1972
“Man today stands, at one of those critical moments, of change in human thought and progress. He has suddenly perceived the unitary nature of his planet, and he has become aware-quite suddenly-that he is all but reconstructing it, in some cases, purposely, in some inadvertantly, but in the aggregate with startling speed and effect.”
“Love is the answer, at least for most of the questions in my heart.”
| — | “Better Together” Jack Johnson |
It sounds so simple.
The next time you groan when it’s time to mow your lawn, take a second first to marvel at a blade of grass. Plants are so commonplace that it’s easy to take their wizardry for granted. When they absorb sunlight, they immediately squirrel away almost all of that energy by using it to knit together a chemical fuel they use later to grow and multiply. It sounds so simple.
And this is why I don’t want to leave.
I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
If Tomorrow Never Comes.
We’ve all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time; heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still, sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today’s possibility under tomorrows run until we can’t anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant. That knowing is better than wondering. That waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst most intractable mistake, beats the hell out of not trying.
