This is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead.
Interpretation
Fear can drive us to make significant changes and adapt to new environments.
In this quote, John Green highlights the transformative role of fear in evolution and survival. Fear is portrayed not only as a protective instinct but also as a powerful motivator that has propelled humanity and other species to evolve, adapt, and confront challenges, fostering growth and development in the face of adversity.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.
Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.
I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle.
So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.
We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it's awesome.
Too many African countries have already hit rock-bottom - ungoverned, poverty-stricken, and lagging further and further behind the rest of the world each day; there is nowhere further to go down.
The western model of growth that India and China wish to emulate is intrinsically toxic. It uses huge resources - energy and materials - and generates enormous waste... it remains many steps behind the problems it creates. India and China have no choice but to reinvent the development trajectory
Defeating racism, tribalism, intolerance and all forms of discrimination will liberate us all, victim and perpetrator alike.
When I wrote the song, The Way It Is, I wanted to move people to take a stand on civil rights in this country.
Inequality, climate change, and conflict are evicting millions from their homes. But these perils are being met with 'anti-answers' such as nationalism, closed borders, lies, and hatred.
If it hadn't been for that march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, there would be no Barack Obama as President of the United States of America.
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