From the Pen of John Steinbeck, II

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."

East of Eden, Chapter 13 part 1.

From the Pen of John Steinbeck

"Results, not causes. The causes lie deep and simply--the causes are a hunger in a stomach, multiplied a million times; a hunger in the soul, hunger for joy and some security, multiplied a million times' muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to create, multiplied a million times. The last clear definite function of man--muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need--this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and the wall and hose and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man--when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when he bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live--for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live--for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know--fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe."

--The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 14.
He's my favorite author, and this is my favorite chapter in my favorite book. Everyone should read the book, and if not, read the entire chapter 14.

What I Learned about Happiness, Hardships, and Humanity from broken Women in the Congo and a Vietnam Veteran

"But some, who like one old man whose name was called, had no problem sharing the joy of the moment by performing a little impromptu dance for my camera, making this crowd of people laugh with abandon. Everything had been taken from them--but their humanity."
                                                                                                       --Kevin Sites, In the Hot Zone
I realize that there is really no reason to be sad sometimes. In the last chapter I read, Kevin goes to the Democratic Republic of the Congo attached to a low-key humanitarian aid organization. He encounters boys not old enough to drive legally in the US who have been recruited by the various militias with confusing acronym names. These little boys have stories of how they have killed several people--not because they want to, but because they're being shot at. One of the boys talks about how he is haunted in his dreams by a man he killed for food.

I don't think I'll ever say "I'm starving!" when I mean "I'm a little hungry" again.

Mr. Sites then heads off to a women's shelter. As an aside, I've volunteered going door to door asking for donations for the local shelter and received good responses from people who have been there. For the women in the Congo, their shelter is the banana plant groves. There they hide from raping rebel soldiers, because if they were all in one place it would be horrible. Some of them have gone through several rapes and widowing experiences, yet Kevin Sites always describes how calm they talk about their experiences. He talks about their singing, their laughter, their dancing.

I don't think I'll ever complain about Mondays again.

Later in the day, I sat down with a professor who is a Vietnam veteran. He told me about several people who went through Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD. He tells me how he once sang old songs with his guitar at a veterans convention, and how those suffering from PTSD were able to open up. He told me, "I knew God had sent me to do this, and now I do it in prisons and I always get the same effect."

I don't think I'll ever complain about how hard something is if I PTSD is not a common consequence of that action.