Betsy Hagestedt
https://www.goodreads.com/bhagestedt
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“We think of forgiveness as a thing. An incident. A choice. But forgiveness is a process. A long, exhausting process. A series of choices that we have to make over, and over, and over again.
Because anger at having been wronged—the rage, the fury, the desire to lash out and cut back—doesn’t just vanish because you say to someone, “I forgive you.” Rather, forgiveness is an obligation you take on not to act punitively on your anger. To interrogate it when it arises, and accept that you have made the choice to be constructive rather than destructive. Not that you have made the choice never to be angry again.”
― Ancestral Night
Because anger at having been wronged—the rage, the fury, the desire to lash out and cut back—doesn’t just vanish because you say to someone, “I forgive you.” Rather, forgiveness is an obligation you take on not to act punitively on your anger. To interrogate it when it arises, and accept that you have made the choice to be constructive rather than destructive. Not that you have made the choice never to be angry again.”
― Ancestral Night
“Malingerers. People who don’t pull their weight. How do you drive them to work harder?”
“Why do they need to?”
She blinked at me. I thought she was honestly puzzled. She shook her head and said, “But if they don’t work—”
I said, “Busywork, they used to call it. There’s absolutely no value to it. Economic value, or personal. There’s value in work you enjoy, or that serves a need. There’s no value in work for its own sake. It’s just… churn. Anxiety. Doing stuff to be doing stuff, not because it needs doing. There’s enough for everybody.”
― Ancestral Night
“Why do they need to?”
She blinked at me. I thought she was honestly puzzled. She shook her head and said, “But if they don’t work—”
I said, “Busywork, they used to call it. There’s absolutely no value to it. Economic value, or personal. There’s value in work you enjoy, or that serves a need. There’s no value in work for its own sake. It’s just… churn. Anxiety. Doing stuff to be doing stuff, not because it needs doing. There’s enough for everybody.”
― Ancestral Night
“[…]any tool can also be a weapon of oppression as easily as it can be an implement of construction.”
― Ancestral Night
― Ancestral Night
“What are the environment? Don’t you think that’s something worth protesting for?”
Ryan was slow to answer; the sadness was again in his voice. “If we cannot raise our level of sanity to the point that we care about other humans, about our own species, we will never learn to care about all the other species we share this planet with.”
― Corvus
Ryan was slow to answer; the sadness was again in his voice. “If we cannot raise our level of sanity to the point that we care about other humans, about our own species, we will never learn to care about all the other species we share this planet with.”
― Corvus
“Creativity is cultural not because it is derivative of it, but because it aims to heal culture. Art saturated with the unconscious acts like a compensatory dream in the individual: it tries to rebalance and address deep-rooted problems.”
― Summer
― Summer
Betsy’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Betsy’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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