Lightly Child, Lightly

And one of the first questions she asked him was – What do you believe?

And Harry hardly had to think about it; he looked straight at her and said,

quite resolutely – I believe in the kindness of strangers.

It had been such a clean answer.
As sharp and true as his own
particular cleverness, and Lia had felt
somewhere deep within her a bud of affection
drinking and breaking.
An exhale of pure oxygen in an otherwise polluted place.

— Maddie Mortimer, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Picador; March 31, 2022)


Notes:

  • Photo: Said Photographer via Pexels
  • Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Comments

  1. a breath of life indeed

    Liked by 1 person

  2. In these times that are suffocating with fear, such moments are more than refreshing -t hey are like life preservers…Such beautiful writing

    Liked by 2 people

  3. So beautiful

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Yes, yes, yes! 🌷

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
    Kindness has no comparison!! Makes the world turn … “Maddie Mortimer, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Picador; March 31, 2022).”

    Like

  6. Felt a rush of exhilaration myself when reading this passage. Like a lifeline thrown to a drowning victim. Today’s news stream threatens to pull me under…. 😦

    Like

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