Samara’s Reviews > How To Hold a Cockroach: A book for those who are free and don't know it > Status Update

The boy recognizes that he loves the cockroach not just for what it is, but for the possibility he has chosen to believe about it...He looks at it with curiosity, the way he looks at all of life nowadays.

"Maybe everything is sacred," he thinks with a reverent breath. "Or maybe nothing is!"

"But you can choose how to hold it!" says he he voice of compassion in his heart. "No matter what happens, whatever truth there may be, you can choose how to hold it."

And what his soul most desired - connection, belonging, fulfillment - a partner, a family, community — a life of meaning, joy, and purpose - his deepest desires were all out of reach, impossible to experience from the prison of his beliefs.

He was so afraid to take chances, so unwilling to risk, and so wary of love; held low by the imaginary weight of failures past and tragedies future, protecting and defending against the terrifying mirages he feared the most: that he was hated and disliked, not good and not good enough; that he was too much or too little, disappointing and stupid, shameful and worthless.

He considered how what he had believed - all that seemed true about himself and everything else - had caused him to suffer.
How his mind's need to be right about its judgments had magnified the suffering.

"Maybe I'm not just stuck in traffic," he thought. "I'm stuck in all of these stories too."

In that moment, he began to believe that tasks must be done and they must be done right...How much was asked of him, how he was praised when he did it well and scolded when he did not.

...he had been scared of the future not for what it was, but for what he had believed it would be - more of the mistakes and disappointments of the past. He questioned...how much he actually knew about the future. What else could you be? he wondered.
He looked at the future with curiosity, the way he would have looked at it when he was a tiny boy, before a dream was first dashed.
He began to feel hope.