Nothing puts things in perspective as quickly as a mountain.
If you think about the unthinkable long enough it becomes quite reasonable.
Weak people can be very stubborn.
Fasting was good for the imagination but bad for logic.
That was the way with grief: it left you alone for months together until you thought that you were cured, and then without warning it blotted out the sunlight.
I expect this is what death is like when you meet it. Sort of wildly unfair but inevitable.