I was thinking of this this morning:
HIPPOGRIFF: Orpheus. We have heard of your loss; you have our sympathies also.
ORPHEUS: I do not need your pity, Hippogriff.
HIPPOGRIFF: It was freely given, boy. You should not scorn it.
ORPHEUS: Don't pity me.
MORPHEUS: You should have gone to her funeral.
ORPHEUS: Why?
MORPHEUS: To say goodbye.
ORPHEUS: I have not yet said goodbye to Eurydice.
MORPHEUS: You should. You are mortal: it is the mortal way. You attend the funeral, you bid farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times, the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.
~Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Fables & Reflections,
"Orpheus, The Song of Orpheus"
3 comments:
It reminds and sounds just like when people said "This is life" when something unfair happened or "This is human" when we see an ugly side of ugly people around us.
I always dun buy this kind of shit and always feel that it is a lame excuse.
Then again, when I am exhausted from all the inner struggle and fighting. I believe, just live. This is all passing moments and this too shall pass.
I agree with you. Sometimes it all sounds like an excuse - or simply giving up. We resign to the bad things that happen because we are too tired or apathetic to fight.
But sometimes, there are the things we can't change. Death for instance.
Or when someone chooses not to love us anymore, or when someone we care about chooses a self-destructive path - they too, have free will, and that is something we can't change. We can try to counsel, but at the end of the day, it is their choice.
The hardest thing in the world it seems, is knowing when to let go of fighting, struggling, and when to keep on trying. One has to be an eternal optimist, and I am not it.
Morpheus was never the voice of wisdom, but he made a point then, in the story.
If the mythic Orpheus had been someone to let it death be, we might never have the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
But then again, the story of Orpehus' descend to Hades - isn't it also a story of heroic failure?
I Think the Opera is extraordinary. how ever this reflection is really sad because it talk about death and I do not like think about it.
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