connecting*the*dots

When I have a week like this one (sorry, no details for you), I often turn to the covers of a James Baldwin novel or essay to keep my head on straight. Why? Read the following snippet of “The Fire Next Time:”

“I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering — enough is certainly as good as a feast — but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth — and, indeed, no church — can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable.

This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be bourne.“

James Baldwin, 5 foot something, a buck something dripping wet, would have banged Shaq straight out of the paint.