Alison

“We are in a rare period in American history, when the decline of one political order makes space for another.”
― Ezra Klein, Abundance

“So I don’t really worry about the young, whose excesses are confined to lecture halls and quadrangles, so much as I fear the old, whose tyrannies are legislative.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

“When I was young, I felt the physical weight of race constantly. We had less. Our lives were more violent. And whether by genes, culture, or divine judgment, this was said to be our fault. The only tool to escape this damnation—for a lucky few—was school. Later I went out into the world and saw the other side, those who allegedly, by genes, culture, or divine judgment, had more but—as I came to understand—knew less. These people, white people, were living under a lie. More, they were, in some profound way, suffering for the lie. They had seen more of the world than I had—but not more of humanity itself. Most stunningly, I realized that they were deeply ignorant of their own country’s history, and thus they had no intimate sense of how far their country could fall. A system of supremacy justifies itself through illusion, so that those moments when the illusion can no longer hold always come as a great shock.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

“But some of the really brave students—the ones who wanted to make the most of their experience in Earth School—asked, “Okay, who will volunteer to be my abuser this time?” or “Who will be my alcoholic family member?” or “Who will be the lover who betrays me?” or “Who will be the child who breaks my heart?” or “Who will be the one who dies and leaves me all alone?” Now here comes the miracle. To each request, some benevolent soul on the other side of the boardroom raised their hand and said, “I’ll do that for you, my love. I’ll do that.” And so our teachers arranged to meet us. They agreed to bring us gifts not only of kindness and compassion but also of pain and trauma—by being exactly the people we needed to crash into at some prearranged moment so we could be broken open enough to perhaps learn something essential from the encounter, graduate from that lesson, and evolve ever closer to the light. Wouldn’t that be incredibly generous of someone, to do that for you? To help you grow like that?”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, All the Way to the River