I think that hurting gives us a way to measure being happy. How can you know one without knowing the other.

The stems stood tall and straight, one series arranged in a single line, the other in a crudely shaped heart, the final one in the shape of the letter U. I love you.

I wanted to write about the third world and had the opportunity to go live in the trenches, so to speak.

But they can't know how the dark space inside me is growing. I lie to them. I can't get out of the dark hole. 'Peace is here' it whispers.

Most people believe they have a clear idea of what's right and wrong. Many say they know how they'll act, or how they'll handle an extreme situation. But to be honest, no one knows. Not reallyBecause none of us truly knows what we'll do when the circumstances become so overwhelming and complex that we can't even tell right from wrong.

She did know that the journey to happiness was laborious and strewn with seeds of suffering. She guessed that it was probably a place each person had to seek for herself, that each heart had to find on its own.

Pain and suffering are the soil of strength and courage.