‘Fly for me, bird of the sun. Fly high’

I feel one should never discourage a true abiding interest in a child. So rarely are sparkles of interest pursued with such intense dedication as to bloom into a passion that we as parents ought to be grateful and let it flourish, helping as we can.

…the thin thread which separates us from disappearing into nothingness.

‘mostly I wish you to learn the lesson of acceptance … as only through acceptance you will find the secret of existence … and you will be happy in a crows or sitting alone … and you will use all that happens in your life, your joys and your sorrows to become a better person, so that even death at the end will be good, because it is part of the game’

There is a bonus in tragedies of such magnitude. You realize that there is no further to go down and that you have two choices. You can stay at the bottom and get used to the agonizing paralysis of those depths, and use any means - drugs, alcohol - to dull the lucid pain for which you are unable to find any relief within yourself. Or you can decide to rise to the surface again, and begin living once more. The last decision requires a conscious effort, for it is the active choice, and it can only succeed if you truly face your problems directly. It needs perseverance and action to follow it up, and it means change. Once you return to the surface you are as new, you have grown and have left down there your old self like a discarded and useless cocoon; and you have discovered that you can fly.

I understood that, before it is too late we must have the humbleness and the wisdom to ask such people to teach us. We must shed this self-imposed blindness, which veils our perceptions - our peripheral life at the surface - and go down to our core, the source of all things, which we share.

‘The immense longing not just to protect, but to rehabilitate the Earth.’ - Lauren van der Post, A Walk with a White Bushman