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then you too are a dream which last night and the night before that

and the years before that

you were not.

People see what they want to see.

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness.

And now I understand something so frightening, and wonderful — how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.

Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled — to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.

But also I say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it’s done right, is a kind of holiness.

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.

As visible symbols, soldiers often receive praise or condemnation, and both reactions feel curiously undeserved.

"It seems like disloyalty to Matthew, somehow, to find pleasure in these things now that he has gone," she said wistfully to Mrs. Allan one evening when they were together in the manse garden. "I miss him so much—all the time—and yet, Mrs. Allan, the world and life seem very beautiful and interesting to me for all. Today Diana said something funny and I found myself laughing. I thought when it happened I could never laugh again. And it somehow seems as if I oughtn't to."

In the end, leadership is a choice. Rank, authority, and even responsibility can be inherited or assigned, whether or not an individual desires or deserves them. Even the mantle of leadership occasionally falls to people who haven't sought it. But actually leading is different. A leader decides to accept responsibility for others in a way that assumes stewardship of their hopes, their dreams, and sometimes their very lives. It can be a crushing burden, but I found it an indescribable honor.