Freedom, Posession, Mortality

There is only one path out of the steamy dense jungle where the battle is fought over glory and power and advantage - one escape from the snares and obstacles you yourself have set up. And that is - to accept death.

The anguish of loneliness brings blasts from the storm center of death: only that can be really yours which is another's, for only what you have given, be it only in the gratitude of acceptance, is salvaged from the nothing which some day will have been your life.

She knew that nothing would get better, that it would never be any different. He had lost interest in his work, and no longer did anything. Because, he said, he was not given a free hand. And now she was sitting there praying for his freedom, praying because she so wanted to believe that he was being unfairly treated, that, if only he was given his freedom, he would become a man again. Wanted to believe it so that she might keep up her belief in him. She knew what the true answer was, but she had to force herself to listen to it: he was as free as anybody can be in the economic mazes of a modern society, and any external change would only bring him fresh disappointment. The situation would repeat itself, and he would discover that everything was just as it had been before.
Yes, yes - And she knew more: knew that there could never be a way out. Because behind all his talk of freedom lay hidden a child's wish to conquer death, a lack of interest in any piece of work the result of which would not be his, even long after he was dead. -And yet she sat there praying.

Dag Hammarskjold