bean bunging

You’re still here because you’re strong, maybe not strong enough to win, but strong enough to live. How many knights and soldiers can say that? How many people in history do you think have clawed their way through the mud, gnashing their teeth and howling in pain, all for that little victory? You being here, after all that bloodshed and horror, is an accomplishment you shouldn’t dismiss.”

Their images faded from the mirrors, and Strauss stepped into his study.“Well?” he was asked.Strauss bowed his head and crossed his chest with his arm. “Everything is proceeding according to your plan, Mistress.”

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.