the story of more

 

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The mass extinctions of long ago were dramatic periods of destabilization that resulted in widespread reorganization—exactly what we are starting to experience today. At the end of a mass extinction, the tree of life has lost several branches—and yet, afterward, life does go on. Plants regreen the earth and animals repopulate the oceans; different species take over and different landscapes result; and time resumes its relentless forward march. 

There will be life on planet Earth after the sixth mass extinction, but we are not able to imagine it any better than the dinosaurs could have imagined a world dominated by mammals walking on two legs, driving bulldozers, and flying airplanes.


—Hope Jahren
The Story of More

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These roses under my window make no
reference to former roses or to better ones;
they are for what they are;
they exist with God to-day.

There is no time to them.
There is simply the rose; it is perfect in
every moment of its existence. 

Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts;
in the full-blown flower, there is no more;
in the leafless root, there is no less.

Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature,
in all moments alike.
There is no time to it.

But man postpones or remembers;
he does not live in the present, but with
reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of
the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe
to foresee the future. 

He cannot be happy and strong until he too
lives with nature in the present, above time.


—Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Your cure is in you, but you are unaware,

And your illness is from you, but you do not see.

And you consider yourself to be a small mass

While within you lies the greatest world.

And you are the clear book

Whose letters make manifest the hidden.

—Amīr al-Mu’mineen, Imam Ali (ع)

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