You wouldn't hurt this bad if you didn't care this much.
From A Pocket Guide to Being Human, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
Switch sat on the fence rail most of the afternoon and would not say why, which is unlike him. Eventually it came out: the old oak by the creek came down in Tuesday's wind, and he had been going to that tree since he was small enough to fit in a knothole. I had nothing for him. For years I thought the cure for grief was to care about fewer things, and I pruned accordingly, and all it got me was a smaller yard. You wouldn't hurt this bad if you didn't care this much, I told him, and he looked at me like I had handed him a stone instead of a nut. Maybe I had. He went back to the stump at dusk anyway, which I noticed.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- It is impossible to breathe slowly and rush anything else.
- Up is the place to go, not the thing to give.
- Everyone has a breaking point, which many have gone beyond without breaking.
- The moments I fear most summon the powers I need most.
- It takes a lot inside to match all the outside can throw at you.
- How easy it would be to change, if the people around us would change first!