I’m afraid of life! There are times I–I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn’t all a misunderstanding– this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain… If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could… get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It’s the self that suffers, and there’s a place where the self–ceases. I don’t know how to say it. But I believe that the reality–the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don’t in comfort and happiness–that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.

I’m afraid of life! There are times I–I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn’t all a misunderstanding– this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain… If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could… get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It’s the self that suffers, and there’s a place where the self–ceases. I don’t know how to say it. But I believe that the reality–the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don’t in comfort and happiness–that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.

– Ursula K. Le Guin –

The Dispossessed

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