The idea is that, you know, you have to be alert when you’re suffering
You have to be alert to the beauty in life
The unexpected beauty in life
And that’s kind of what I was trying to get across with the idea of the cat
There’s this cat that lives across the street from us called Ginger
And Ginger’s a Siamese cat
Cat’s really aren’t domesticated, eh
Technically speaking, they’re still a wild animal
But they kind of like people
God only knows why, but they do, you know
And so Ginger will come wandering over
And our dog looks at her, but they’re friends
And she rolls over on his back
And Sikko used to, you know, nose her a bit
And then she’d kind of mosey over and let you pet her if she was feeling like it that day
And, you know, you have to look for those little bits of
That little bit of sparkling crystal in the darkness when things are bad
You have to look and see where things are still beautiful
And where there’s still something that’s sustaining
And, you know, you narrow your time frame
And you be grateful for what you have
And that can get you through some very dark times
And maybe even successfully if you’re lucky
But even if unsuccessfully
Then maybe it’s only tragic and not absolute hell
And you can do that, you know
In the worst situation, you can make it only tragic and not hell
And there’s a big gap between tragedy and hell, you know
There’s nothing worse at a death bed than to see the people there fighting
The death is bad enough
But you can take that, as terrible as it is, and make it into something that’s absolutely unbearable
And maybe, I think—and this is sort of what I closed the book with—
Is this idea, is that if we didn’t all attempt to make terrible things even worse than they are
Then maybe we could tolerate the terrible things that we have to put up with in order to exist
And maybe we could make the world into a better place, you know
And it’s what we should be doing and what we could be doing
Because we don’t have anything better to do