He was afraid, but he knew now: fear usually meant he was standing on the edge of something new, something self-altering, something potentially good. Fear was not something he would never shy away from ever again. Because life is full of near misses and absolute hits, of great love and small disasters. It's made up of ice cream and tears and your face slowly getting older. It's dead-ordinary and truly truly amazing. What he's realized is it's all here now. So he takes a deep breath and swallows it whole, for life; it just whizzes by.
There is a pattern in all things that are part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of a berry bush or the pattern of a leaf. We try to copy these patterns in our lives, seeking the rhythms, the dances, and the forms that comfort us. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. The ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death.
