#redhandfiles

Do you have any regrets as you get older? I feel I could have just handled things better in my life. I even feel guilty for having regrets. Do you? ROBIN, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA How do we say goodbye? ELSE, LONDON, UK Dear Robin and Else, There is always a temptation to take the position that one has no regrets. There is a death row defiance to this notion that stares down the accusations of the past and says, ‘I am what I am and be damned’. We feel that to harbour regrets dishonours the very place to which we have arrived. But, it can be helpful to remind ourselves that these regrets are intimations informing us that we have developed sufficiently to perceive the nature of our past shortcomings. Regret can be a sorrowing hope that sees the faults of the past through the more lucid and open eyes of the present. They are growing pains as we become better at being ourselves. Most of our past mistakes are consistent with our personal evolution at that time, and the waves of regret simply signal a progression and expansion of our hearts. Perhaps it is useful to see our lives as a series of failed or abandoned dreams, but to also recognise that these dreams are the very architecture of our humanity; to lovingly accept our shortcomings and lay them to rest in the knowledge that growth and regret go hand in hand, as do failure and potentiality. Many of the regrets I have today seem to revolve around my past inability to say goodbye. For many years my way of dealing with things was to cut and run and not look back. I was forever fleeing from something or someone or some place, a disastrous situation, for example, or my various addictions or ruined relationships. This state of flight felt like a creative, motivating force, yet was actually completely devoid of reflection, and certainly unimpeded by the corrective influence of regret. I felt that if I ever stopped I would be eaten alive by the chaos that followed me around like a stray dog. It took many years before I found the resolve to turn around and stare down the imagined monster of my past. I found, when I finally looked, many ancient and festering wounds that a timely and heartfelt goodbye could well have healed. Over time I have learned that the opportunity to say goodbye is the ultimate privilege. It can serve as a sigh of remembered love, a reparative breath that precedes an adjournment, a pause of gratitude before you inhabit the next you. To say goodbye, as difficult as it can be, must be seen as a gesture of reverence to the passage of life because there are many to whom this opportunity is denied, with devastating effect. There are those who are snatched away who never had the opportunity to comprehend the immense significance of their lives, and there are those left behind who stand yearning before a vacuum, paralysed in an eternal farewell that can never be spoken. So, to your question, Else, how do we say goodbye? We summon the courage by understanding that to say goodbye is an act of appreciation for the past that we have moved beyond, and a prelude to the new you that will, in time, require its own goodbye, and as you continue to grow, further goodbyes, each a rehearsal for the final, most precious goodbye of all. The way to say goodbye is to turn and face the past and administer the word as an offering of gratitude and also a healing gesture of mercy, and simply say it. Goodbye. Love, Nick.

I read this letter to Susie, and she reminded me that her dreams of Arthur immediately after the incident, were terrible, scorched-earth affairs, full of grief and weeping. She said Arthur visits her sometimes. He is always the same age. Nothing much happens, he simply sits with her. Sometimes she laces his shoes. Sometimes she combs his hair. Sometimes he crawls into her lap and wraps his arms around her neck. She told me that she recently had a dream in which Arthur had a button for a nose, and when she pressed it a little blue light blinked on. There is no despair or remorse in these dreams. They are, instead, an uncomplicated joy.

Digital Ghosts in the Machine: Cave's Faustian Dance with AI

I'm 17 years old, what can you tell me about love? MAURO, LEUVEN, BELGIUM How do I not have my heart broken? JENNY, PARIS, FRANCE Dear Mauro and Jenny, The surest way to avoid a broken heart is to love nothing and no-one — not your partner, your child, your mother or father, your brothers or sisters; not your friends; not your neighbour; not your dog or your cat; not your football team, your garden, your granny or your job. In short, love not the world and love nothing in it. Beware of the things that draw you to love — music, art, literature, cinema, philosophy, nature and religion. Keep your heart narrow, hard, cynical, invulnerable, impenetrable, and shun small acts of kindness; be not merciful, forgiving, generous or charitable — these acts expand the heart and make you susceptible to love — because as Neil Young so plainly and painfully sings, 'Only love can break your heart.' In short, resist love, because real love, big love, true love, fierce love, is a perilous thing, and travels surely towards its devastation. A broken heart — that grief of love — is always love’s true destination. This is the covenant of love. However, Mauro, to resist love and inoculate yourself against heartbreak is to reject life itself, for to love is your primary human function. It is your duty to love in whatever way you can, and to move boldly into that love — deeply, dangerously and recklessly — and restore the world with your awe and wonder. This world is in urgent need — desperate, crucial need — and is crying out for love, your love. It cannot survive without it. To love the world is a participatory and reciprocal action — for what you give to the world, the world returns to you, many fold, and you will live days of love that will make your head spin, that you will treasure for all time. You will discover that love, radical love, is a kind of supercharged aliveness, and all that is of true value in the world is animated by it. And, yes, heartache awaits love’s end, but you find in time that this too is a gift — this little death — from which you are reborn, time and again. I have only one piece of advice for you both, and it is the very best that I can give. Love. The world is waiting. Love, Nick