Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of tedium and anxiety, punctuated by briefer interludes of stark terror and pain.
Interpretation
The quote compares the challenges of facing a severe illness to the experiences of warfare, emphasizing the endurance required to cope with both.
Christopher Hitchens draws a parallel between the prolonged struggle of living with a serious illness and the experience of war. He highlights that both involve extended periods of waiting and anxiety, disrupted only by moments of intense fear and suffering, illustrating the psychological and emotional toll that such experiences can have on an individual.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one might quote this to emphasize the emotional struggle of patients.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
The soldier who gropes for glory must submit himself to discipline. Subordination gives strength and security to an army. He that will not submit to it when corrected and improved by the experience of ages does not deserve the proud appellation of a soldier.
Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?
If you apologize because you are afraid, then you are a child not a man.
It's been a struggle for me because I had a chance to be white and refused.
The Edge...There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.