In the contemporary world where things fall apart, and the centre cannot hold, you have to imagine a community where there is no centre. Hank, at the end of this year I started thinking that a lot of life is about doing things that don’t suck with people who don’t suck.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of building a meaningful community amidst chaos by engaging in positive activities with good people.
John Green articulates a vision for contemporary life, where amidst societal upheaval and uncertainty, one can find fulfillment in creating connections and engaging in uplifting activities with others. He suggests that fostering a community lacking a central point can lead to a more fulfilling existence, emphasizing the value of surrounding oneself with positive individuals and experiences.
In practice
Using this quote during a speech on community building at a local gathering.
Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.
Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.
I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle.
So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.
We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it's awesome.
An intimate relationship is one that allows you to be yourself.
And when I think about that, I think that if nothing but being married will help a man, he's durn nigh hopeless.
Married people dont look like they have bedrooms on their minds when they look at each other. In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both...Not both.
...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.
When my father came out to his mom, my grandmother said, 'You waited for your father to die; why couldn't you have waited for me to die?' I knew then that I never want to contribute to the corrosiveness of wanting someone to stay hidden.
Any decent society must generate a feeling of community. Community offsets_x000D_ _x000D_ loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of belonging. Yet today_x000D_ _x000D_ the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in all the_x000D_ _x000D_ techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of loneliness.
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