Tuesday, October 11, 2011

hmmmm

I realize now that the past does not dissolve like a mirage.  I realize that the future, though invisible, has weight.  We are in the gravitational pull of past and future.  It takes huge energy - speed-of-light-power-to break that gravitational pull.
How many of us ever get free of our orbit?  We tease ourselves with fancy notions of free will and self-help courses that direct our lives.  We believe we can be our own miracle, and just a lottery win or Mr. Right will make the world new.

The ancients believed in Fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything.  The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it.  We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior.  The burden is intolerable.
- Jeanette Winterson, Weight

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A woman and her husband take their young children into a buffet restaurant with a bag to place under the table where all participated in filling with bacon for their breakfast the following day.
Then they wonder why they have to pick the kid up for shoplifting.