John Steinbeck on Falling in Love: A 1958 Letter

I've quoted it before, and I quote it again.

Albeit, my all time favourite letter.

New York
November 10, 1958 

Dear Thom: 

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers. 

First — if you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you. 

Second — There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had. 

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply — of course it isn’t puppy love.
But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you.
Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it. 

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it. 

If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration. 

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also. 

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good. 

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it. 

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can. 

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away. 

Love,
Fa

100%

Words cannot describe how much I agree with this.

"What represents your greatest trust in a person?"

"Not bringing your brain out when you're out and about with them."

This is so complete and utterly true of myself when I'm with my family and best friends.

How do you see the world?

"Maybe some feelings are, and always will be, beyond words." 

I loved the cinematography.
Komorebi, so stunningly captured.

It's so true.
Some feelings and words aren't meant to be captured into a combination of strokes.

Mr. Edward Magorium: 37 seconds.
Molly Mahoney: Great. Well done. Now we wait.
Mr. Edward Magorium: No. We breathe. We pulse. We regenerate. Our hearts beat. Our minds create. Our souls ingest. 37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime. 

-- Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium

"The unreal is more powerful than the real. Nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. It’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That’s the only lasting thing you can create."

-- Chuck Palahniuk

Outside Kerikeri (House of Cards) the other day.

"When I meet you, in that moment, I'm no longer a part of your future. I start quickly becoming part of your past. But in that instant, I get to share your present. And you, you get to share mine. And that is the greatest present of all."

-- Sarah Kay, Hiroshima

The Tension of Opposites

"Have I ever told you about the tension of opposites?" he says.

The tension of opposites?

"Life is series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle." 

"Which side wins?"

He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth.

"Love wins. Love always wins."

The first time I read this, I paused. Then placed the book face down on the table, laughing in relief. Picking it up once more, I read the paragraph aloud, savouring each and every word.

How do I put it?

It was like sailing in an endless storm. Being tugged to and fro, back and forth. Then amid the anxiety, the confusion, the chaos - coming finally into a quiet port.

That my unsaid feelings, something I was so sure belonged only to me, verbalised.

Such is the power of the written word.

It was late, and we were tired.
We assumed there would be more nights.
Anna's breathing started to slow, but I still wanted to talk.
She rolled onto her side.
I said, I want to tell you something.
She said, You can tell me tomorrow.
I had never told her how much I loved her.
She was my sister.
We slept in the same bed.
There was never a right time to say it.
It was always unnecessary.
The books in my father's shed were sighing.
The sheets were rising and falling around me with Anna's breathing.
I thought about waking her.
But it was unnecessary.
There would be other nights.
And how can you say I love you to someone you love?
I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her.
Here's the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar.
It's always necessary.
I love you,
Grandma

        -- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

"And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away."

- John Steinbeck on Falling in Love: A 1958 Letter

樹欲靜而風不止、子欲養而親不在。

Never forget that.

落葉歸根。

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made of the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."

-- Carl Sagan,

In a billion years' time, our sun will explode and all that we have been, all that we have done; evidence of human civilisation, our existence, will have been for naught.
But does that matter?
Do we have to leave behind a legacy?

Such a selfish reason.
To have need and want for signs of our existence to remain.

The Chinese have an idiom for it, "落葉歸根".
Fallen leaves return to their roots.

Leaves decompose and provide nourishment for the tree in the coming months.
Endless cycles of life and death.

One day, we too will return to our roots.
Won't we?

That was before I knew what it meant.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Upon first reading, I immediately fell in love.