Mamakat's: We Suffice

One of my favorite books of all time are The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson.  I happened upon the first book on the paperback rack at the local library one rainy day when I was in ninth grade.  I was bored, and Lord Foul's Bane looked interesting.  

In a nutshell, Thomas Covenant is a man who discovers that he has leprosy. He is isolated.  His wife leaves him and takes his son, fearing that the disease will spread.  His community cuts him off as well. Covenant is incredibly angry about this, as any normal person would be. He pretends that he feels nothing, that he is numb, that he doesn't need anyone.  He isolates himself.

Until something happens, and Covenant ends up in another world where he doesn't have leprosy, and where the very ground exudes health.  To save his sanity, he denies everything that is happening.  It happens to him anyway, and along the way he meets a number of people who influence him to cast off his numbness and become human again. 

One of those people is Bannor.  Bannor is a Bloodguard, who is assigned to guard Covenant.  As Covenant gets to know Bannor, he discovers that the Bloodguard do not age, and do not die unless killed in battle.  Bannor left behind his wife and family, who have all died over the centuries, and Covenant is horrified at what has been lost. He asks Bannor how he can stand it.

"We suffice." is all Bannor says. 

That quote always come back to me, especially when I start getting down on myself and wallowing in the self-pity trough. 
Suffice means to be competent, to meet a need, to be enough.  

Women are constantly reminded of society's expectation of perfection.  We are expected to be paragons, raise kids, keep a clean house, have dinner on the table, AND hold down a professional career, while working out and losing 5lbs a week. That is a ton of pressure, and most of us are crumbling away underneath that mass of expectation.  But we don't have to be the very best, to be perfect. That's what I love about this quote. 

I suffice.  I don't have to lose myself in a mad quest for perfection. I suffice. I don't have to weigh 117lbs. soaking wet or work out 3 hours a day. I suffice. I don't have to have a pristine house, or be a perfect mother who does everything wonderfully. I do the best that I can, however, and that is enough.

I am enough.  I suffice. 



1.) A quote from someone that has stuck with you.

Endurance

This weekend we are venturing into uncharted territories once again.  This Trifextra isn't so much a writing challenge; it's more of a reading challenge.  We want you to scour through your favorite pieces of literature and give us the best 33 words you can find.

Some quick guidelines:

• The writing you choose should not be your own.
• The 33 words should be lifted directly from another source (i.e. don't take 33 random words from Macbeth and shake them into a poem of your own (though that would be an awesome idea for another challenge) and don't take a sentence from the beginning of a book and another from the end--keep the original order).
• Credit your sources.
• You can't use the same 33 words as anyone else in the linkz. Skim through before posting your own.  You can use the same author and even the same title, just not the exact same words.

Ack! Do you people realize just how many books I've read in my life?  This was an impossible task, so I narrowed it down to books I've read more than once.  Lonesome Dove,  Howards End,  Mrs. Dalloway,  East of Eden, that Tolkien dude...  And then I thought of a worn red paperback that I randomly found one rainy day at the library back in 1979.  Book One of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Lord Foul's Bane, by Stephen R. Donaldson.  That random book stuck with me because I felt so much like Thomas Covenant at the time.  It was also my first experience with reading a series that didn't involve the Hardy Boys.  I've repurchased copies two or three times over the years, as the previous ones disintegrate.


"...he was dreaming.  The way to endure a dream was to flow with it until it ended. He had to make that descent in order to survive. That need outweighed all other considerations."