Chance is always a silent partner in disaster.
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“...Norwegians, who were famous for their reserve. (There is a Norwegian joke about an old farmer who, in the grip of powerful emotion, once confessed to his best friend, "I love my wife so much I almost told her.")
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson
When I visited her, she would hug me so tightly I could barely breathe. After a little while, she would ask me, “Bryan, do you still feel me hugging you?” If I said yes, she’d let me be; if I said no, she would assault me again. I said no a lot because it made me happy to be wrapped in her formidable arms. She never tired of pulling me to her.
“You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close,” she told me all the time.
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One of the country’s least-discussed postwar problems is how frequently combat veterans bring the traumas of war back with them and are incarcerated after returning to their communities. By the mid-1980s, nearly 20 percent of the people in jails and prisons in the United States had served in the military.
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“It’s been a very strange day, Bryan, really strange. Most people who feel fine don’t get to think all day about this being their last day alive with certainty that they will be killed. It’s different than being in Vietnam … much stranger.” He nodded at all the officers who were milling about nervously. “It’s been strange for them, too.
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“All day long people have been asking me, ‘What can I do to help you?’ When I woke up this morning, they kept coming to me, ‘Can we get you some breakfast?’ At midday they came to me, ‘Can we get you some lunch?’ All day long, ‘What can we do to help you?’ This evening, ‘What do you want for your meal, how can we help you?’ ‘Do you need stamps for your letters?’ ‘Do you want water?’ ‘Do you want coffee?’ ‘Can we get you the phone?’ ‘How can we help you?’ ”
Herbert sighed and looked away.
“It’s been so strange, Bryan. More people have asked me what they can do to help me in the last fourteen hours of my life than ever asked me in the years when I was coming up.” He looked at me, and his face twisted in confusion.
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Most of the juvenile lifer cases we handled involved clients who shared Evan’s confusion about their adolescent behavior. Many had matured into adults who were much more thoughtful and reflective; they were now capable of making responsible and appropriate decisions. Almost all of the cases involved condemned people marked by the tragic irony that they were now nothing like the confused children who had committed a violent crime; they had all changed in some significant way.
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In preparing litigation on behalf of the children we were representing, it was clear that these shocking and senseless crimes couldn’t be evaluated honestly without understanding the lives these children had been forced to endure.
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The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving.
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Constantly being suspected, accused, watched, doubted, distrusted, presumed guilty, and even feared is a burden borne by people of color that can’t be understood or confronted without a deeper conversation about our history of racial injustice.
“You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close,” she told me all the time.
_____________________________________________________
One of the country’s least-discussed postwar problems is how frequently combat veterans bring the traumas of war back with them and are incarcerated after returning to their communities. By the mid-1980s, nearly 20 percent of the people in jails and prisons in the United States had served in the military.
_____________________________________________________
“It’s been a very strange day, Bryan, really strange. Most people who feel fine don’t get to think all day about this being their last day alive with certainty that they will be killed. It’s different than being in Vietnam … much stranger.” He nodded at all the officers who were milling about nervously. “It’s been strange for them, too.
_____________________________________________________
“All day long people have been asking me, ‘What can I do to help you?’ When I woke up this morning, they kept coming to me, ‘Can we get you some breakfast?’ At midday they came to me, ‘Can we get you some lunch?’ All day long, ‘What can we do to help you?’ This evening, ‘What do you want for your meal, how can we help you?’ ‘Do you need stamps for your letters?’ ‘Do you want water?’ ‘Do you want coffee?’ ‘Can we get you the phone?’ ‘How can we help you?’ ”
Herbert sighed and looked away.
“It’s been so strange, Bryan. More people have asked me what they can do to help me in the last fourteen hours of my life than ever asked me in the years when I was coming up.” He looked at me, and his face twisted in confusion.
_____________________________________________________
Most of the juvenile lifer cases we handled involved clients who shared Evan’s confusion about their adolescent behavior. Many had matured into adults who were much more thoughtful and reflective; they were now capable of making responsible and appropriate decisions. Almost all of the cases involved condemned people marked by the tragic irony that they were now nothing like the confused children who had committed a violent crime; they had all changed in some significant way.
_____________________________________________________
In preparing litigation on behalf of the children we were representing, it was clear that these shocking and senseless crimes couldn’t be evaluated honestly without understanding the lives these children had been forced to endure.
_____________________________________________________
The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving.
_____________________________________________________
Constantly being suspected, accused, watched, doubted, distrusted, presumed guilty, and even feared is a burden borne by people of color that can’t be understood or confronted without a deeper conversation about our history of racial injustice.
The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins
She knew every word that had ever been spoken, but she could think of nothing to say that might ease his grief.
When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi
Only later would I realize that our trip had added a new dimension to my understanding of the fact that brains give rise to our ability to form relationships and make life meaningful. Sometimes, they break.
It occurred to me that my relationship with statistics changed as soon as I became one.
As a doctor, you have a sense of what it’s like to be sick, but until you’ve gone through it yourself, you don’t really know. It’s like falling in love or having a kid. You don’t appreciate the mounds of paperwork that come along with it, or the little things. When you get an IV placed, for example, you can actually taste the salt when they start infusing it. They tell me that this happens to everybody, but even after eleven years in medicine, I had never known.
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Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving. Describing life otherwise was like painting a tiger without stripes. After so many years of living with death, I’d come to understand that the easiest death wasn’t necessarily the best.
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The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church.
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Graham Greene once said that life was lived in the first twenty years and the remainder was just reflection.
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Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving. Describing life otherwise was like painting a tiger without stripes. After so many years of living with death, I’d come to understand that the easiest death wasn’t necessarily the best.
_________________________________________________
The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church.
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Graham Greene once said that life was lived in the first twenty years and the remainder was just reflection.
The Son, by Phillip Meyers
She did not really think about whether she believed, though in the past decade, her faith had come back, and they said that was all that mattered. Being old, you had no real choice—salvation or eternal nothingness—and it was no wonder who you saw in church, it was not young people with hangovers and their entire lives ahead of them.
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Beware the small man in Texas; he must be ten times meaner to survive in this land of giants.
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Beware the small man in Texas; he must be ten times meaner to survive in this land of giants.
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