20 - Creating The Void

TO THE READER It is easy to be generous when you are full. The real measure of a person is what they give away when they have almost nothing left to give. There was a man who could no longer stand, could no longer speak, and knew he was dying. He had every reason to close his hands around what little remained to him. Instead he opened them. What a person reaches for at the very end tells you wh...

TO THE READER A man can appear to grow several inches overnight. Not because anything was added to him, but because something was finally set down. For years he had carried his body one way, and everyone who saw him assumed the prison had bent him. They were wrong. He had been bending himself, on purpose, every waking hour. The way you stand is never an accident. It is an answer to the world ar...

TO THE READER A root that stops drawing water does not simply rest. It begins to kill the tree it was meant to feed. We tend to think of loyalty to a tradition as a matter of guarding it, walling it off, keeping it pure. Mitose taught almost the reverse. The surest way to destroy something you love is to close it. There is a difference between the root of a thing and the fruit of it, and confus...