While I usually don't agree with her politics, Sars at Tomato Nation is an internet writer I enjoy reading. Today, she has posted a bittersweet essay: Still Here.
It's still here. Things still happen on it. You've got a friend's birthday party written in it, and another friend's wedding. You know that a whole day can't go anywhere, really, but it seems like theyâ€"the "they" in "you know, they say"â€"would have canceled it at some point, found a way to skip over it like the thirteenth floor of a building. But no, it's there, and as it gets closer, you wonderâ€"how long will you do this?
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I was home with the family in New York this weekend, and I didn't get on the computer, but I meant to post my favorite Ayn Rand quote of all time, the one I always think of when times are rough. It's this sentiment that got me through that awful day, and that I continue to meditate on during each anniversary of September 11th.
"We do not think that tragedy is our natural state. We do not live in chronic dread of disaster. We do not expect disaster until we have specific reason to expect it, and when we encounter it, we are free to fight it. It is not happiness, but suffering, that we consider unnatural. It is not success but calamity that we regard as the abnormal exception in human life."
â€"Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged