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“False alarm everyone,” Mrs. B. announced. “Jim has pants on. I checked.” More hooting and whistling. The rest of that class is a blur, but I must have done okay. I got an A for that assignment…

Then, I would help him with his alchemy, and the things I learned amaze me to this day. To see the world in its smallest shards, it changes you. Before I met him, I lived in a tent in the grasslands, and now I’m being taught how the universe works and how to turn worthless dirt into priceless gems. It’s both humbling and encouraging. And when he wasn’t fighting the Profane, he was helping Welindar advance in farming, mining, and sanitation, almost rebuilding it from the ground up. For him to know so much, this man who was recognized by the spirits, it was awe-inspiring. I wanted to entrust everything to him, to follow him forever, because I knew whichever direction he went was the right one.”

Maybe you and I do deserve to suffer for our wrongdoing. If that’s so, then it means that when things get painful, when things get difficult, we don’t have the luxury of quitting. We don’t get to end our lives to escape what we did. Whatever form the pain takes, we bear it, we endure it, we welcome it, all while we try to make this world a place where people like us, like how we used to be, have no place, and the people who would be hurt can instead live in peace. The next time you encounter an obstacle you cannot overcome, when you just want to curl up into a ball and quit on the world, remind yourself that you don’t deserve the peace of surrender. You have to keep working, to keep fighting, to keep suffering, until the day when you’ve fully repented.