101
" She unwinds her scarf, taking so long about it that I wonder if she expects me to respond. “You were following the rules,” I offer after a minute. It makes her words no more pleasant. Resentment. Was that how she’d looked at me? Then how am I supposed to trust how she looks at me now?
My words elicit a thankful smile. “Mostly, though, I knew you could do the job. Did you ever know other autistic people?”
I shake my head. I’d heard rumors about one teacher, but never asked him. Mom had encouraged me to find a local support group, but I’d never seen the appeal—or the need. It wouldn’t change anything. I had friends, anyway. Peopleonline, my fellow volunteers at the Way Station. I even got along with Iris’s friends.
“Well, I did, and I feel like a fool for never recognizing your autism. I had autistic colleagues at the university. They were accommodated, and they thrived. One researcher came in earlier than everyone else and would stay the longest. I saw the same strengths in you once I knew to look for them. You’re punctual, you’re precise, you’re trustworthy. When you don’t know something, you either figure it out or you ask, and either way, you get it right. I wanted to give you the same chance my colleagues had, and that other Nassau passengers got. One of the doctors is autistic—did you know?” Els silences an incoming call. “Does that answer your question? "
― Corinne Duyvis
117
" What sort of charge against old age is the nearness of death, when this is shared by youth?
Yes, you will say; but a young man expects to live long; an old man cannot expect to do so.
Well, the young man is a fool to expect it. For what can be more foolish than to regard the uncertain as certain, the false as true?
An old man has nothing even to hope. ' Ah, but it is just there that he is in a better position than the young man, since what the latter only hopes he has obtained:
The one wishes to live long; the other has lived long.
And yet! what is 'long' in a man's life? For grant the utmost limit: let us expect an age like that of the king of the Tartessi, who reigned eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty.
Nothing seems long in which there is any . last' , for when that arrives, then all the past has slipped away -only that remains which you have earned by virtue and righteous actions.
Hours indeed, and days and months and years depart, nor does past time ever return, nor can the future be known.
Whatever time each is granted for life, with that he is bound to be content. "
― A.C. Grayling , The Good Book: A Humanist Bible