It is the most supremely interesting moment in life, the only one in fact when living seems life, and
I count in the greatest good fortune to have these few months so full of interest and instruction in
the knowledge of my approaching death. It is as simple as one's own person as any fact of nature,
the fall of a leaf or the blooming of a rose, and I have a delicious consciousness, ever present, of
wide spaces close at hand, and whisperings of release in the air.
How terribly the rice suffers under the pestle! But it emerges polished, as white as cotton. The same process tempers the human spirit: Hard trials shape us into polished diamonds.
~ from A PRISON DIARY by Ho Chi Minh in AFTER SORROW by Lady Borton
