It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when you’d eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did. (268)
Interpretation
This quote highlights how eating can serve as a source of comfort during difficult times by recalling happier moments.
In this quote, Ron Rash emphasizes the emotional connection between food and memory. During hard times, the act of eating can evoke memories of better days, reminding a person of past joys and providing solace in the present. It highlights the importance of simple pleasures, like sharing a meal, in bringing comfort and reminding us of life’s brighter moments.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a wellness seminar focused on finding comfort in everyday activities.
She realized that being starved for words was the same as being starved for food, because both left a hollow place inside you, a place you needed filled to make it through another day. Rachel remembered how growing up she’d thought living on a farm with just a father was as lonely as you could be. (130)
The woman doesn't look up. It's as if she's deaf. Maybe she is. Maybe she's like the Cambodian women I've read about, the ones who witnessed so many atrocities that they have willed themselves blind. Maybe that's what you have to do sometimes to survive. You kill off part of yourself, your hearing or eyesight, your capacity for hope.
Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel's length, satisfies the reader.
Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.
Surely it is a sin to reject the few gifts we are given. Be happy in the flash of time granted to us or hurt forever.
Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.
Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.
Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.
There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.
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