The Power to Make Them See

Here's a quote I love from a book I recently read, The Magician's Apprentice by Kate Banks:

"He is a wanderer," said the stranger. "He travels from village to village. He writes his poems on the road and he reads them to whomever he meets. He touches us here." The stranger pointed to his heart. "He has a mysterious and wonderful power. Tomorrow we will see that something has occurred. It will be because of him." . . .

In the night a pear tree had flowered, sprouting white and pink blossoms.

"It is nothing that would not have happened anyway," said Baz.

"But maybe no one would have noticed," said Tadis. "The Poet has opened their eyes. He has made them see what is there. That is his power."

And since I shared that, I might as well share the other quotes I enjoyed from that book plus a few others. Accompanied by pictures of things I've seen, most by me but a few by my five-year-old son who recently developed an interest in photography.

"I was given my power by someone much like me," said Tadis. "It is the power to create, but with this came the obligation to teach. I shall give you the power to create, Baz, just as I have. But never forget that the real power is that which we all have sleeping in our souls. It is the power to remove illusions, to see and feel who we really are. It is the power to love and forgive."

"We are all heading toward the same destination," Tadis said. "That is the least significant. What is most interesting is our journey. When you come to see this, then you've learned real magic."

You must use your mind and not let it use you.

"They say that some of those who failed to reach the top fell into deep ravines, and others were swallowed by monsters and demons," said Baz.

"The monsters and demons were of their own making," said Tadis. "If you invent them, you will have to slay them. That is common practice, is it not? We invent monsters so we will have something to slay. Then we punish ourselves for not being up to the task."

"Silence does not come," said Tadis. "It is always there. You are simply aware of it."

Now two from Patrick Ness in And the Ocean Was Our Sky:

For there are devils in the deep,
but worst are the ones
we make.

Was it prediction? Had she had a proper vision? Or was it a command, as it so often feels in the case of the prophetic? When you predict the future, when you do so strongly and you cling to it, how much of that future do you then cause to happen?

And one from Lemony Snicket in Read Something Else: Dubious Wit and Wisdom:

There is a popular game in which one person says something to another, and that person says it to another, and so on and so on, and all the while the message is getting more and more garbled until it is nonsense. The game is called "living in the world" and has been played for thousands of years.

A few from Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World--And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling.

Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless—in short, more dramatic—than it really is.

 . . .

Here’s the paradox: the image of a dangerous world has never been broadcast more effectively than it is now, while the world has never been less violent and more safe.

When someone threatens you with a machete, never turn your back. Stand still. Look him straight in the eye and ask him what the problem is.

Resist blaming any one individual or group of individuals for anything. Because the problem is that when we identify the bad guy, we are done thinking. And it's almost always more complicated than that. It's almost always about multiple interacting causes--a system. If you really want to change the world, you have to understand how it actually works. . . . Blaming an individual often steals the focus from other possible explanations and blocks our ability to prevent similar problems in the future. . . . Accept that bad things can happen without anyone intending them to.

One from Kate Alice Marshall in I Am Still Alive:

To survive you need to learn to hold contradictory things in your head at the same time. I am going to die; I am going to live. There is nothing to fear; be wary of everything.

And a final one from The Magician's Apprentice:

"I am not alone," said Tadis. "You are not alone. No one is ever alone, because that is not the human condition. Each of us is unique, different. Yet we are all the same, all one. That is the greatest wisdom I can give you."