These two paragraphs are the last two in the aforementioned George Saunders' essay, The New Mecca.
It's a big world, and I really like it. In all things, we are the victims of the Misconception from Afar. There is the idea of a city, and the city itself, too great to be held in the mind. And it is in this gap between the conceptual and the real that aggression begins. No place works any differently than any other place, really, beyond mere details. The universal human laws -- need, love for the beloved, fear, hunger, periodic exaltation, the kindness that rises naturally in the absence of hunger/fear/pain -- are constant, predictable, reliable, universal, and are merely ornamented with the details of local culture. What a powerful thing to know: that one's own desires are mappable onto strangers, that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in the Other.
Just before I doze off, I counsel myself grandiosely: Fuck concepts. Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.
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