When I am in distress for real or unfathomable causes, when the chaos outside threatens to overwhelm the precarious order within, when anxities surround me on all sides like an invading army closing in on the remnants of a defeated foe, when I grieve for my parents, my boyhood, and the friends I have lost, the irreplaceable ones, whether they go all at once or slip away into infirmity or madness, I console myself with the wisdom of Emerson in the last paragraph of "Compensation." -- DL
<<< And yet the compensatrions of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men.
>>>
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Compensation"
