Tress of the Emerald Sea

Enjoy memories, yes, but don't be a slave to who you wish you once had been.

We want to imagine that people are consistent, steady, stable. We define who they are, create descriptions to lock them on a page, divide them up by their likes, talents, beliefs. Then we pretend some—perhaps most—are better than we are, because they stick to their definitions, while we never quite fit ours. Truth is, people are as fluid as time is. We adapt to our situation like water in a strangely shaped jug, though it might take us a little while to ooze into all the little nooks. Because we adapt, we sometimes don’t recognize how twisted, uncomfortable, or downright wrong the container is that we’ve been told to inhabit.

One of the great tragedies of life is knowing how many people in the world are made to soar, paint, sing, or steer—except they never get the chance to find out.

Even small actions have consequences. And while we can often choose our actions, we rarely get to choose our consequences.

That is one of the great mistakes people make: assuming that someone who does menial work does not like thinking. Physical labor is great for the mind, as it leaves all kinds of time to consider the world. Other work, like accounting or scribing, demands little of the body—but siphons energy from the mind. If you wish to become a storyteller, here is a hint: sell your labor, but not your mind. Give me ten hours a day scrubbing a deck, and oh the stories I could imagine. Give me ten hours adding sums, and all you’ll have me imagining at the end is a warm bed and a thought-free evening.

In the land where everyone screams, everyone is also slightly deaf.

Do you know how many grand romances would have avoided tragedy if the hero had thought, "You know, maybe I should ask her if she likes me first"?

Beyond that, memories have a way of changing on us. Souring or sweetening over time—like a brew we drink, then recreate later by taste, only getting the ingredients mostly right. You can’t taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become.

If bravery is the wind that makes us soar like kites, fear is the string that keeps us from going too far.

Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. More potently, our minds are a hungry audience, craving only the peaks and valleys of experience. The bland erodes, leaving behind the distinctive bits to be remembered again and again. Painful or passionate, surreal or sublime, we cherish those little rocks of peak experience, polishing them with the ever-smoothing touch of recycled proxy living. In so doing—like pagans praying to a sculpted mud figure—we make of our memories the gods which judge our current lives.

It might be said that Tress had a way with words. In that her words tended to get in her way.

A boring truth will always have difficulty competing with an exciting lie.

he was six and a half feet tall and had a jaw so straight it made other men question if they were.

If you want to create heroes, don't give them something to fight for. Give them someone to fight for.

Heroism is often the seemingly spontaneous result of a lifetime of preparation.

More twisted than a librarian’s love life (trust me, they’re a strange bunch),

It might seem that the person who can feel for others is doomed in life. Isn’t one person’s pain enough? Why must a person like Tress feel for two, or more? Yet I’ve found that the people who are the happiest are the ones who learn best how to feel. It takes practice, you know. Effort. And those who (late in life) have been feeling for two, three, or a thousand different people…well, turns out they’ve had a leg up on everyone else all along. Empathy is an emotional loss leader. It pays for itself eventually.

Well, parents have to say things like that. They’re required to see the best in their children, otherwise living with the little sociopaths would drive a person mad.

In short, Tress was a normal teenage girl. She knew this because the other girls often mentioned how they weren’t like “everyone else,” and after a while Tress figured that the group “everyone else” must include only her. The other girls were obviously right, as they all knew how to be unique—they were so good at it, in fact, that they did it together.

With a few tips, he wasn’t so boring after all. Secretly, I’ll tell you that you aren’t either. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to lower your value. Don’t trust them. They know they can’t afford you otherwise.

The part the stories leave out," Tress said as the Sorceress's runes formed into a vibrant wall, "is everything that comes before. You see, I've discovered that it's all right to need help. So long as you've lived your life as the kind of person who deserves to be rescued.

Lem nodded. “It is. But a terrible idea executed brilliantly has to be better than a brilliant idea executed terribly. I mean, look at pelicans.

You can’t taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become.

Empathy is an emotional loss leader. It pays for itself eventually.

And then, Tress took the singular step that separated her from people in most stories. The act, it might be said, that defined her as a hero. She did something so incredible, I can barely express its majesty. 'I should consider this more,' Tress thought to herself, 'and not jump to conclusions.

You might think this an unfair moral problem to force upon a simple window washer, but there’s a certain arrogance in that kind of reasoning. A window washer can think, same as anyone else, and their lives are no less complex. And as I’ve warned you, “simple” labor often leaves plenty of time for thought. Yes, intellectuals and scholars are paid to think deep thoughts—but those thoughts are often owned by others. It is a great irony that society tends to look down on those who sell their bodies, but not on those who lease out their minds.

Do not let memory chase you… Enjoy memories, yes, but don’t be a slave to who you wish you once had been. Those memories aren’t alive. You are.

But after spending ages walking around with everyone piling bricks in your arms, it can throw you off balance when someone removes a brick to carry for you.

Men often described the girl as having hair the color of wheat. Others called it the color of caramel, or occasionally the color of honey. The girl wondered why men so often used food to describe women’s features. There was a hunger to such men that was best avoided.

We always pretend the ideals and culture of the past have aged like wine, but in truth, the ideas of the past tend to age more like biscuits. They simply get stale.