“I consulted a trauma expert who travels to communities devastated by natural disasters. When she meets with suffering people, she often asks this question, “Where are you feeling the pain in your body?” She wants to know if they want to talk about their emotions or if they need to talk about what’s happening physically to them. I used this advice when I recently met with a grieving friend. I wasn’t sure what to ask her, so I sat with her, cried, and then asked, “How are you feeling the grieving in your body?” She loved the question. Nobody had ever asked her this, and she wanted to talk about all the trembling and nausea she was feeling.”
Source: The Six Conversations: Pathways to Connecting Again in an Age of Isolation and Incivility
“Many of us want one of the other events: we want to be part of a political revolution, a scientific discovery, an artistic innovation, and - because our society tells us that this is the event that in the end makes up for all our misery - we want to fall deeply in love and stay so.
Suffering, in turn, is not an event that any of us want. Unfortunately, it is probably the one that many of us are more likely to experience than any of the others. As tempting as it is to try to offer a more sanguine conclusion to the distilliation of ideas that this book has attempted to accomplish, I cannot end on a polite lie.
I know that if falling in love is an event, losing that love is no less so.”
Source: Distillations: Theory, Ethics, Affect
“वेदना में एक शक्ति है जो दृष्टि देती है. जो यातना में है, वह दृष्टा हो सकता है.”
Source: शेखर: एक जीवनी - 1
“In my youth
I was nurtured upon the bitter bread of tension,
each breath seasoned by unquiet nights
and guarded dawns.
Thus did my flesh learn
to thrive on the restless pulse of worry,
finding sustenance in the very chaos
that frayed its edges.”
Source: VERSES OF THE BROKEN: Echoes From A Fractured Mind
“And when the rush fades,
we are left hollow,
staring at the wreckage of who we were.
The mirror reveals
no rebel, no hero,
only a shadow of a self
we barely remember.
Still, we return.
The cycle repeats,
not because we do not see the cost,
but because the void terrifies us more.
Better the burn,
than the weight of the fall.”
Source: VERSES OF THE BROKEN: Echoes From A Fractured Mind
“Not all deceptions are palatable. Untruths are too easy to come by, too quickly exploded, too cheap and ephemeral to give lasting comfort. Mundus vult decipi, but there is a hierarchy of deceptions.
Near the bottom of the ladder is journalism: a steady stream of irresponsible distortions that most people find refreshing although on the morning after, or at least within a week, it will be stale and flat.
On a higher level we find fictions that men eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence, because they gratify some wish.
Near the top of the ladder we encounter curious mixtures of untruth and truth that exert a lasting fascination on the intellectual community.”
“A bitter taste
settles on my tongue,
and I feel the sting
of an unspoken insult.
In this stark moment,
I question everything:
the words we shared,
the laughter that once felt real,
the trust I placed in your hands.”
Source: VERSES OF THE BROKEN: Echoes From A Fractured Mind
“Sometimes,
my afflictions are so grievous
I feel as though
I am condemned
to a life of endless suffering,
as if paying penance
for some unknown transgression
in a life, long past.”
Source: VERSES OF THE BROKEN: Echoes From A Fractured Mind
“I made a deal with God, He doesn't keep track of my mistakes, and I don't keep track of sufferings.”
“But the three-day pattern--Friday's tragedy, Saturday's despair, Sunday's triumph-- became for Jesus' followers a pattern that can be applied to all our times of tribulation. Good Friday demonstrates that God is not indifferent to our pain; God, too, is personally "acquainted with grief." Holy Saturday hints that we may go through seasons of confusion and seeming defeat. And Easter Sunday shows that, in the end, suffering will not prevail.”
Source: Undone: A Modern Rendering of John Donne's Devotions