Douglas Coupland has written a lot of great books, one that even defined my generation, for awhile at least (Generation X).
I checked most of his books out of the library, although I did end up buying one of them, called Life After God. I think I bought this in Arizona when I was in between jobs and didn't know what was next.
Anyway, I love his writing style, and I'm rereading Life After God after finding it in a box the other day. Two quotes have been stuck in my mind all day long:
"And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened."
"Brent then said that humans are the only animal able to feel the pain of sorrow that has stretched out through linear time. He said our curse as humans is that we are trapped in time - our curse is that we are forced interpret life as a sequence of events - a story - and then when we can't figure out what our particular story is we feel lost somehow. 'Dogs only have a present-tense in their lives,' he continued. 'Their memories are like those carved ice swans you see at weddings, that look good but melt in an hour. Humans have to endure everything in life in agonizingly endless clock time - every single second of it. Not only this, but we have to remember having endured our entire lives, as well. What a drag, no? It's amazing that we all haven't gone mad.'"
2 comments:
Those are some interesting thoughts.
I've never thought of someone as permanently broken but it does make sense in certain situations..especially if it's something in the past that has affected the mind and spirit...but I never say never or ever :)
Forgiveness would be so much easier if we were like dogs.
I wonder if addiction is a kind of brokenness, like what he's talking about. It seems if you're addicted, you continue to fall in the same way, in the same pattern, and only through accountability can you break that pattern.
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