Upgrade

What do you call a heart that is simultaneously full and breaking? Maybe there’s no word for it, but for some reason, it makes me think of rain falling through sunlight.

I want you to know that if I could make things go back to the way they were, I’d do it in a second. But, alas, there are no reverse gears in life.

In the absence of compassion, selfishness is the most rational response of all.

Today, in a given tragedy, we can overlay the faces of our family, friends, and co-workers on only
150 people. Beyond that, compassion fades, but not because we’re evil. Our emotional hardwiring can’t cope with it.

One child dies in a well, the world watches and weeps. But as the number of victims increases, our compassion tends to diminish. At the highest number of casualties—wars, tsunamis, acts of terror—the dead become faceless statistics.

I want to feel it. If I lose the ability to hurt, I also lose my grasp on joy—those brief moments of contentment that make consciousness worth the voyage.

Finally understood that free will did not exist, because I could not choose my desires, only whether to pursue them.

Right and wrong are constructs born of human sentiment. Nothing but stories we’ve made up and assigned meaning to. They don’t correspond to any objective reality. The only thing real is survival.”

Higher intelligence doesn’t make you less greedy or self-centered or evil. It doesn’t necessarily make you a good person.

Francis and I had always talked about buying an RV after we retired. Seeing all the places in the country we’d only ever seen on TV. Never thought I’d be doing it alone. And out of necessity. Life is endlessly surprising, isn’t it?