The following passages were highlighted by Alex in his copy of Dr. Zhivago, quoted in the book Into the Wild:
Your resources are sufficient, but the ego strangely distant. Not self centered, but self assured. Energy not bent on dominating their environment but functioning harmoniously within it.
This is what I am getting at when I talk about subsisting, and raising subsistence to the level of an art form.
Everything had changed suddenly, the tone, the moral climate. You didn’t know what to think; whom to listen to. At such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute – Life or Truth or Beauty – of being ruled by it in place of the man made rules that had been discarded. You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more unreservedly than you had ever done in the old familiar peaceful days, in the old life that was now abolished and gone for good.
I understand this. What do you do after the Tsunami comes? The only absolute I found was that change always happens. So I committed myself to change, to following it where it might lead. I surrendered. I found more than all that had been lost. Hard to believe now, as I sit here and write this and reflect on these words. So I have learned the meaning of subsisting, and through my strength impart strength to others.
bAs Mythology 