Human Experience

While reading this article in Slate about nature reflecting feelings of grief, I came across a quote by Marilynne Robinson (author of Housekeeping and Gilead) from an interview in the Paris Review:

The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.

I love how she doesn't diminish pain or place blame for it. She doesn't seek retribution for pain or a way to alleviate it. Instead she looks at pain as something bigger than we are and a way that we are connected to the rest of humanity.