A life (Walter)

And as he faces the horizon, we realize that maybe it's all any of us can hope to do. Survive. Caught in the raging crosscurrents of history, of sorrow, and of certain death, a man realizes he is powerless, that all his belief in himself is a vanity...a dream. So he does his best, he squirms against the snow and the wind and his own animal hungers, and this is a life. For family, for love, for simple decency, a good man rages against nature, and the brutality of fate, but it is a war he can never win. Every love is the same love, and it is overpowering—the wrenching grace of what it is to be human. We love. We try. We die alone.

Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins