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I have always said that the way to deal with the pain of other__ is by sympathy, which is suffering with, and that the way to deal with one__ own pain is to put one foot after the other. Yet I was never willing to suffer with others, and when my own pain hit me, I crawled into hole. Sympathy I have failed in, stoicism I have barely passed. But I have made straight A__ in irony- that curse, that evasion, that armor, that way of staying safe while seeming wise. One thing I have learned hard, if indeed I have learned it now: it is a reduction of our humanity to hide from pain, our own or other__. to hide from anything. That was Marian__ text. Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless. Skinless? Dance around in your bones.
Wallace Stegner All the Little Live Things
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I have always said that the way to deal with the pain of other__ is by sympathy, which is suffering with, and that the way to deal with one__ own pain is to put one foot after the other. Yet I was never willing to suffer with others, and when my own pain hit me, I crawled into hole. Sympathy I have failed in, stoicism I have barely passed. But I have made straight A__ in irony- that curse, that evasion, that armor, that way of staying safe while seeming wise. One thing I have learned hard, if indeed I have learned it now: it is a reduction of our humanity to hide from pain, our own or other__. to hide from anything. That was Marian__ text. Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless. Skinless? Dance around in your bones.
WS
Wallace Stegner

All the Little Live Things

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