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*As in "Welcome to" and where "Gator Country"
means "Los Angeles"
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Gator Country: from bertrand russell to you
Solstice, I can't say this any better than Bertrand Russell, so I'm just gonna quote him:
"[T]he beauty of Tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more or less obvious shapes, is present always and everywhere in life. In the spectacle of Death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, and in the irrevocableness of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow. In these moments of insight, we lose all eagerness of temporary desire, all struggling and striving for petty ends, all care for the little trivial things that, to a superficial view, make up the common life of day by day; we see, surrounding the narrow raft illumined by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; from the great night without, a chill blast breaks in upon our refuge; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated upon the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism into the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into the overmastering beauty of human existence. From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, enunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be--Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of Man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity--to feel these things and know them is to conquer them."
Remember our talk about Einstein vs. Gandhi? I just remembered what Gandhi said: "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in service to others." That's one I like.
You actually have the option here to start over: to reinvent yourself into the best person you can be. That's an enviable opportunity that may never come along again -- to be able to cast your sail in the darkness on a roiling, tempestous sea and have the fight of your life -- finding yourself at day break (and it will come) in the company of heroes. Shackleton literally had it.
FIGHT.
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