Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.’
The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the ‘tonic of wildness’ as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.
‘So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren’t based on fact at all. Sometimes regrets are just . .’ She searched for the appropriate term and found it. ‘A load of bullshit.’
A person was like a city. You couldn’t let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don’t like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.
‘Want,’ she told her, in a measured tone, ‘is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem. Maybe there is a life that you really want to live.’
‘Never underestimate the big importance of small things,’ Mrs Elm said. ‘You must always remember that.’
‘Life begins,’ Sartre once wrote, ‘on the other side of despair.’
‘Because, Nora, sometimes the only way to learn is to live.’
Bertrand Russell wrote that ‘To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three-parts dead’.
‘You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.’