Only there and then did I see and feel the torment of what
I’d done, and what I’d become – the pain and the fear and the waste; the
stupid, unforgivable waste of it all. My heart broke on its shame and sorrow. I
suddenly knew how much crying there was in me, and how little love. I knew, at
last, how lonely I was...
But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The
soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is
one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul
can’t be stilled...
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| Courtesy: Lessons Learned in Life |
One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so
desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and
sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can
help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only
shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only
your soul can do the crying for you...
I was thinking about another kind of river, one that runs
through every one of us, no matter where we come from, all over the world. It’s
the river of the heart, and the heart’ desire. It’s the pure, essential truth
of what each one of us is, and can achieve. All my life I’d been a fighter. I
was always ready, too ready, to fight for what I loved, and against what I
deplored. In the end, I became the expression of that fight, and my real nature
was concealed behind a mask of menace and hostility. The message of my face and
my body’s movement was, like that of a lot of other hard men, Don’t Fuck With
Me. In the end, I became so good at expressing the sentiment that the whole of
my life became the message.
~Gregory David Roberts
Shantaram
