Complications

Isn't it funny how when you're thinking about something, it's like the universe knows it and sends you messages about just the thing you're thinking about. Or perhaps you're just better tuned into it. Anyway, I'd like to share a quote from the book I'm reading, Atonement. The quote is from Briony, a very intense little girl with a vivid imagination and an incredibly sensitive heart:

"Was everyone else really as alive as she was? Fore example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she as valuable to herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her sister also have a real self concelaed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time thinking about it?...If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance. But if the answer was no, then Briony was surrounded by machines, intelligent and pleasant enough on the outside, but lacking the bright and private inside feeling she had." (p. 34)

As I wrote about a few days ago, the voice of my professor has been bouncing around in my head, "embrace life's complexities," and this quote from Atonement I think further explains this sentiment. To be fully mature, we must understand that there are two billion voices, histories, prejudices, hopes, needs all striving at the same time. And to be fully alive, we must not feel as though we might drown in irrelevance amidst all the voices, but rather stand tall and take our place beside them.