"Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, "teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change different shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."
Pudge writes this as a part of an essay he was assigned. The question all of the students were asked to answer is, "How will you ever get out of this labryinth of suffering?" He explains that there is no easy way out of the labryinth and that some people think it's easiest to just get comfortable and end up pretending that the labryinth does not exist. So they build a small, self-sufficient world in a corner somewhere. But he says that it will only lead you to a lonely life accompanied by the words asked in the question. Pudge goes on to say that some come to look for a Great Perhaps or like Alaska, they choose to leave the labryinth "straight and fast" because they collapse into the enigma of themselves. Although they will be forgotten, it's hard to think that they will just dissipate into the earth to be mined by humans or used to heat their homes. Pudge realizes that this can't be because Alaska was not just matter, she is her own genetic code and her life experiences and her relationships with people and her memories and dreams and hopes and desires. Those can't be destroyed because after all, we are greater than the sum of our parts.
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