‘Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?’

— Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

At this point, we’ve gotten really great at “writing it down” We’ve been trained to take notes, snag photos, and add things to our bookmarks so we don’t forget about them. The more important question that nobody has bothered to ask is what to do with it all. Components are ultimately the building blocks of a story, project, or idea, but accumulation means nothing without connection. What are the footprints of your life adding up to?

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

∆ William Butler Yeats

I am often asked what keeps me going after all these years. I think it is the realization that there is no final struggle. Whether you win or lose, each struggle brings forth new contradictions, new and more challenging questions. As Alice Walker put it in one of my favorite poems: I must love the questions themselves as Rilke said like locked rooms full of treasures to which my blind and groping key does not yet fit.

"While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother's love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love."