"How was it possible to endure the losses one accumulated just by living? Sentiment based on fact was the most grievous sort, she thought, for the only escape from it was to shrug off the fact - that babies died, say, or that people lost lands they loved, that youth aged, love faded, everybody ended in graves, and nothing would ever again be the same. She pounded herself to tears with these melancholy truths, as if to ensure that she would not betray herself by forgetting them - which, however, she knew full well that she would, as all other grown persons have done, to their manifestly improved mental balance."

Annie Dillard The Living