I was smitten by the picture the words below created for me; I like the image of all of us being in one boat. I feel like laughing a little at our haplessness. In fact, reading that caused me to glance up to the bulletin board above my desk, where I have a Far Side cartoon pinned. The cartoon shows a bunch of men and horses thrown into a messy heap, with the sheriff saying to a man beside it: “And so you just threw everything together? …Mathews, a posse is something you have to organize.”

I leave my classes with this vast sense of expansion, a widening of my perceptions of how I live, how I fit into the larger picture of humanity. From King Lear to astronauts to the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge to Pavlov and his dogs, we are all in the same flimsy boat, struggling for survival on the ocean of things that living heaves at us, and what we heap upon ourselves. I see how it is not *my* pain, but *the* pain of being alive, of struggling to live in a way that is meaningful and impactful and sometimes, even a little fun.

–Katherine Turner, DatingGod

We are ludicrous. And yet, because of that, endearing.