Booknerdik

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

I always feel like I’m struggling to become someone else. Like I’m trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I guess it’s part of growing up, yet it’s also an attempt to reinvent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself–as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What’s missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I’m still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I guess that lack itself is as close as I’ll ever come to defining myself.

I imagined how wonderful it would be if indeed we could be lovers. I longed for the warmth of her skin on mine. I pictured us married, living together.

I, too, remember that feeling. You are caught between all that was and all that must be. You feel lost.

“Don’t you see? You and he may never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see there’s a huge possibility you’ll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might be already married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isn’t that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the world. Don’t you find that scary?” Aomame stared at the red wine in her glass. “Maybe I do”, she said, “But at least I have someone I love” “Even if he never loved you?” “If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s a salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person”