Tehanu’s Gift

Ever have a feeling of loss and futility in life and your creative endeavors?
 
… I know I do sometimes.
 
I think that’s just part of our human nature.  Don’t give up hope though.  I found a passage in a book by Ursula K. Le Guin that I refer to often when I am experiencing those feelings.  It gives me a reminder that we are all part of the greater plan that our creator has designed:
 

“I think”, said Tehanu in her soft, strange voice, “that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live.  I can give back to the world all that I didn’t do.  All that I might have been and couldn’t be.  All the choices I didn’t make.  All the things I lost and spent and wasted.  I can give them back to the world.  To the lives that haven’t been lived yet.  That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did have, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.”

From: The Other Wind by Ursula K. Le Guin

Take comfort in that thought, do the things that are important to you, create beautiful things for the world, and know that whatever you do not get around to accomplishing in your time here will be taken up by others who follow us.

(Originally published April 25, 2016)

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