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Maar ik ben van mening dat je, behalve in de periode dat je nog echt jong bent, hoe dan ook prioriteiten moet je stellen in het leven. Je moet een rangschikking opmaken van hoe je je tijd en energie wilt verdelen. Als je er niet in slaagt om tegen een bepaalde leeftijd voor jezelf zo'n strikt systeem te ontwikkelen, gaat je leven focus en scherpte missen.
Als ze vernemen dat ik elke dag aan hardlopen doe, hebben sommige mensen daar bewondering voor. Af en toe krijg ik te horen dat ik toch echt een sterke wil moet hebben. Natuurlijk ben ik blij met die lovende woorden. Liever zo dan gekleineerd te worden. Maar volgens mij kun je er niet zomaar van uitgaan dat je met een sterke wil alles voor elkaar krijgt. Zo eenvoudig zit de wereld niet in elkaar. Ik betwijfel eerlijk gezegd of wilskracht er wel zoveel mee te maken heeft dat ik elke dag hardloop. De eigenlijke reden dat ik het al meer dan twintig jaar volhoud, is waarschijnlijk dat hardlopen me gewoon ligt. Of me tenminste niet al teveel lichamelijk leed bezorgt. Zo zitten mensen in elkaar: wat ze graag doen, daar gaan ze spontaan mee door, en wat ze niet graag doen, daar geven ze de brui aan. Dat zal ergens wel iets met wilskracht te maken hebben, maar hoe sterk je wil ook is, hoe je het ook haat om te verliezen, als je niet vol bezieling met iets bezig bent, zul je het niet lang kunnen opbrengen. En zelfs als het je toch lukt, kan dat onmogelijk goed voor je zijn.
Om die reden raad ik nooit iemand in mijn kennissenkring aan om te hardlopen. Ik heb me vast voorgenomen om nooit uitspraken te doen als: "Hardlopen is geweldig, dus allemaal aan de slag!" Als iemand interesse heeft voor langeafstandslopen, zal hij er vroeg of laat wel mee beginnen, ook zonder aanmoedigingen. En als hij geen interesse heeft, zullen zelfs de meest vurige pleidooien vergeefs zijn. Marathons lopen is geen sport voor iedereen.
Those same differences kept bringing them back together, though. For they charged the relationship with an undeniable excitement that so far neither one of them had found with anyone else. He had probably tried. China knew that. She didn't need to. She'd known for years that Matthew Whitecomb was right for her.
"It was tough at first. Thirteen year is too long to wait for a man to decide he's ready. I think I always knew at some level that we weren't going to work out. It just took me this long to get up my nerve to call it quits. It's the whole idea of going it alone that kept me hanging on to him. What'll I do at New Year's? Who'll send me a valentine? Where do I go on the Fourth of July? It's incredible to think how many relationships must be held together for the purpose of having someone to spend national holidays with."
"The relationship, in fact, was starting to be all about the relationship, if you know what I mean. Hours talking about why we we're having trouble, why I want one thing and he wants another, why he backs off and I rush forward, why he feels suffocated and I feel deserted. What is it about men and committing, for God's sake?"
Men were there, it seemed, and then they weren't, and when they weren't, you got on without them.
Do I look thirty-eight, Simon thought, or forty-eight? Or seventy-eight? Anyway, what does thirty-eight look like? And does thirty-eight with three children and a mortgage inevitably look quite different from thirty-eight with no commitments and a Porsche?
"I feel cast aside," Laura said. "Thrown away. Not good enough. Rejected."
Wendy put her mug down.
"I have to say, except for superficially, that isn't how it looks."
"Oh?" Laura said sharply.
"It looks," Wendy said, "as if you'd just grown miles and miles apart. Simple as that. Nothing left but the formalities."
"And if he'd never met this girl?"
"He'd probably met another one."
"Because of me?"
Wendy made a face.
"Because of your marriage. There were two of you in that."
Henry's throat was suddenly thick with angry tears.
"Why does all this have to happen? Why can't we just do what we were doing?"
"Because," Leo said, "human beings never stand still, and nor do their relationships. They either develop or die. Look at you and Hooper, hardly speaking a year ago and now best mates. That's change. It may change again, and if it does you won't die of it. All your father and mother and I are doing is changing but as we are adults we make bigger waves."
Now, lying awake, she wondered about it. What exactly did lonely mean? What had she meant by it, in the past, when she had declared herself she to be so lonely within inches of Peter's living, breathing self? She switched the light on again and picked up the dictionary from the floor. 'Alone' it said, 'solitary, standing by oneself'. Yes, Anna thought, yes, I am all those things. 'Abandoned', the dictionary went on, 'uncomfortabely conscious of being alone.' She closed the book emphatically. She was neither of those last two things. She reached out and switched of the light. Those two things had been the loneliness of the past.
"Lord, if you cain't forgive me all my sins, just don't remember them too good, no. Thank you. Amen," he said.
Ira Jamison never got over being surprised by the way white trash thought. He assumed their basic problem was genetic. They were born in ignorance and poverty, with no more chance of success than a snowball in a skillet, but as long as they were allowed to feel they were superior to Africans, they remained happy and stupid and believed anything they were told.
Clete had said she looked like a black swizzle stick with a cherry stuck on the end. He should have been a writer rather than a chaser of bail skips, I thought.
What were the dreams really about? An imperfect world, I suspect, one over which death and injustice often seemed to hold dominion. But what kind of fool would surrender his sleep over a condition he could not change?
Sammy always said it was the normals you got to watch out for, 'cause they never learn who they really are.
Not only did he not feel hungry, now he felt nauseous. The compact mass of the mozzarella, once sliced, felt like eating the breast of a pregnant woman: milk and flesh at once.
Why do people do anything? Half the time they don't know themselves. Even if they do, their reasons needn't make sense to anyone else.
That was the way it was. Reasons existed, but reason itself, discredited by the excesses committed in its name, had been abandoned. Even reality was little more than a designer tag for whatever tissue of lies was being worn that year. But this too was normal. None of the ways we experience the world corresponds even remotely to the scientific truths about it. Not only are our intuitions invariably wrong, it is impossible to imagine what they would be if they were right.
Criminals have the same aspirations as everyone else. That's why they become criminals.
Zen had always derived much amusement from Ellen's simple-minded approach to current affairs. Despite her intelligence, she could be quite amazingly naive and literal in her judgements. She seemed to believe that the truth was great and would prevail, so why waste time spinning a lot of fancy theories? Whereas Zen knew that the truth prevailed, if at all, only after so much time had passed that it had become meaningless, like a senile prisoner who can safely be released, his significance forgotten, his friends dead, a babbling idiot.
"Meaning that history is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books - books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?'" He smiled. "By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account."
"In my experience," Teabing said, "Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire."
See people for who they are, not who you want them to be. Idealization of others serves an important function at various times throughout life, but it is childlike thinking - not to mention potentially dangerous - to insist on someone's goodness, or good intentions, when that person is exploiting or hurting you. The issue is not whether you can deal with that person's particular shortcomings. The impact of the bad will not go away because you don't want to face it.
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.